Flash drive with Recycler/autorun virus on it,,,,

English Hardware
1

Hello all,

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I’m hoping to clean up some flash drives that have the recycler/autorun.exe virus on them. I fixed one friend’s infected flash drive a few months ago but this virus is different. I thought it would be a matter of deleting the files using Linux but it won’t let me. The “move to trash” option is grayed out. I’m hoping that in Linux there is a way around whatever protection the virus uses to prevent itself from being deleted. I could try to boot into windows and then use my anti-virus program, but I don’t think I’m infected and I would rather not risk that if it’s not necessary. I also hear some anti-malware programs don’t work on it. Thanks in advance.

Ingvar

2

I see two quick options:

  1. delete the files using a console window and a command like this:
sudo /sbin/rm -Rf /media/disk/*

You might have to check the path might be different (/media/disk)

  1. format the drive in Yast’s partitioner.
3

Afterthought: I assumed you wanted everything gone from the drives. If you want to delete just one file with the name acbde.fgh then the command is pretty much the same:

rm /path_to/abcde.fgh
4

There is Software called ACRONIS , it is windows disk Utility et. Try it, I have had similar problems before and with GRUB boot loader, and has cleansed them throughly, if you have access to a computer that has it, give it a go!