Pen drives are highly portable digital storage devices, designed for use with your computer's USB connector. These drives will often open themselves automatically when connected, and may even be set to launch certain applications, such as installer programs. Although innocuous in nature, this "autoplay" capability can also allow malicious programs, such as viruses, to install themselves on your computer. In rare cases, these viruses find their way onto the pen drives during the manufacturing process.
Instructions
- 1Turn on your computer and log in as normal. Insert the pen drive into an available USB slot. Click the "Cancel" button in any dialog windows that appear.
- 2Open "My Computer" from the desktop or Windows Explorer. Locate the pen drive from among the list of mounted drives and note the corresponding drive letter.
- 3Open the Start menu. Click on "Run" and enter the drive letter followed by a colon (example: "E:"). Click the "OK" button; a Windows Explorer window displaying the visible contents of your pen drive will appear. Note the visible contents of the pen drive for future reference.
- 4Open the "Tools" menu located on the top of your Windows Explorer window. Select "Folder Options." Navigate to the "View" tab. Examine the contents of the scroll box labeled "Advanced Settings."
- 5Click the radio button labeled "Show Hidden Files and Folders." Clear the check boxes labeled "Hide Extensions for Known File Types" and "Hide Protected Operating System Files." Click the "Apply" button, followed by the "OK" button.
- 6Examine the Windows Explorer window that corresponds to the pen drive. Locate the autorun.inf file. Open this file in Notepad or any other text-editing program. Review the text inside the file and look for any references to files with ".exe" extensions; make a note of these references.
- 7Delete the autorun.inf file and any applications referred to within. Your pen drive is now free of any autoplay viruses.
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