USB Storage Media Basics

USB Thumb Drive
Do you have a USB thumb drive with you? We get viruses in our usb once in a while these days so its really a head scratch if you bring it to another pc and start infecting others. Kinda shy when others say... "Hey you got a virus on your usb and now its infecting my pc...yikes." Not all antivirus could detect virus,malware,spyware and the like.

USB Basics 101
Here is what i usually do when i use my usb, i know its mind bugging specially if your in a hurry but prevent it and you'll be glad you just saved your pc's ( *ass ) oh...

Steps:
1. Before inserting your USB into the usb port, press and hold down SHIFT key so that your usb will not autorun some files, usually viruses.

2. If you don't know what drive your usb is, double click on My Computer and check your usb drive letter.

3. Click Start>run type "cmd" and then Enter, type the drive letter plus a colon. ex: ( e: or g: or ... ) then Enter

4. type "dir/a" then enter, look carefully at your files, search for unknown files, usually its autorun.inf,vbsxxx.dll, any file/s that your not familiar with.....do step 5.

5. A common virus would be the autorun.inf, so in order to delete it, type
" del autorun.inf /a /f ", Enter

6. type "dir/a" again and search for it if whether it still exist or not.

7. Do the same procedure for other files that you think is a virus, usually .exe extension

PLEASE READ
These steps would not assure you of a virus free USB, but using this routine would minimize it. Not all autorun.inf is a virus, its a file that is usually found in cds to make it auto run.Some viruses use the autorun.inf file to "auto-run" themselves in order to infect the pc. Hope i was able to explain it well. Feel free to comment so that i may be able to reply to your question.