How to Remove USB Flash Drive Virus Easily

They may not be major risks but USB flash drive viruses are annoying.

Among the most common are Cool_USEP Scandal (sowar.vbs) and Ravmon (ravmon.exe). At first, my computer gets infected whenever someone asks me to copy/paste a file from/to a USB flash drive. Later, I found out it was caused by the culprit - Autorun.inf, which spreads the virus.

Here's how to defeat them easily!

• If a small window similar to the image pops up, do not click 'OK '. Instead, click 'Cancel'.

• Now, go to Start\Run and type 'cmd' to open the Command Prompt.

• In the command prompt, type the drive letter: (ex: E:) and press Enter .

• Now type dir /w/a (dir_space_slash_w_slash_a) and press Enter. A list of the files contained in the USB flash drive will be shown.

• Check whether the following files are present: ravmon.exe, Cool_USEP Scandal.exe, Autorun.inf, svchost.exe or any other suspicious executory files. If these are present, the USB flash drive is infected.
  

• Still in Command Prompt, type attrib -r -a -s -h *.* and press Enter. The 'read only', 'archive', 'system' and 'hidden' attributes of all the files will be disabled.

With Eset NOD32 running in your computer, the virus probably is eliminated by now. But if it's still present in your USB flash drive, do the following steps:

• Turn-off System Restore service. Right-click 'My Computer'/Properties/System Restore tab, check "Turn off System Restore on all drives" and click 'Apply' and 'OK'.

• Open 'My Computer', right-click your flash drive and click 'Explore' (very important). Right-click on the virus and related files and click delete, or right-click / NOD32 Advanced options and click 'Quarantine file'.

• Open NOD32 and go to Tools/Quarantine and remove (del) the quarantined files.

• Restart computer and turn-on System Restore.

Just follow these steps carefully and say goodbye to viruses.