2 ways to Disinfect your Infected Pen Drive

As Pen Drives viruses are quite popular these days, it sometimes happens that neither the virus in the pen drive gets deleted even after showing hidden files in Windows Explorer nor it lets format the pen drive using normal Format Pen Drive option in  Windows Explorer.

Usually the virus sits in pen drive and runs automatically when you attach the pen drive and will prevent anything from running which may remove it.

But there are two ways which i found to get rid of this problem. Forget about Antivirus, most pen drive viruses are not caught by Anti Virus softwares.

1. Format From DOS

If you are unable to format the pen drive(of course after backing up data from pen drive) from Windows Explorer, then DOS is the way to go. Start run (Window key + R) and type cmd and press Enter.

Now type in FORMAT X: /FS:FAT32 /Q /V:PenDrive, Replace X with the drive letter of Pen Drive and press Enter, this should format your pen drive and the virus would be gone.

2. Use a Linux Box

Other solution to the infected pen drive is view the contents of pen drive using a Linux System. As most of the viruses affect Windows PC’s, it is very unlikely that pen drive virus may be effective on any Linux system. When you’ll view the contents of infected pen drive from Linux Box, you’ll be able to spot the virus and delete it permanently. I used this technique to disinfect pen drive of my friend using Ubuntu.