My colleague like to borrow my thumbdrive to copy movie/ mp3. When they return to me, the thumdrive always infected with Recycled.scr, autorun.inf etc. My home PC is running Avira and it can detect and clean it. My colleague Antivirus at home failed to detect these virus.

Last time, because I didn't turn off 'Autorun' when plug in thumbdrive, my PC was infected luckily Avira cleaned it. Since I turn off 'Autorun', at least my PC not infected anymore by Recycled.scr.

But I'm still worried. If I create an empty notepad file, rename it o Recycled.txt and force rename extension to scr, which is Recycled.scr, then change the attribute to "Read only", and save this file into thumbdrive. Is it able to prevent infection??

This post has been edited by cactuscch: May 28 2011, 12:18 PM

Normally I use folder then rename it to Autorun.inf and set to read-only.

Download Panda USB Vaccine Portable. I already upload it to Mediafire.
Download here.
Vaccinate your thumbdrive and your computer.

Or you can use Bitdefender Immunizer.
Download here
Both are portable and can be carry around in a pendrive.

This post has been edited by Ramjade: May 28 2011, 07:41 PM

but you'll need to have the drive converted/formatted to ntfs first right?

Nope. I use the Panda USB vaccine and my pendrive is in FAT32 format. I don't know about Bitdefender Immuniser. But I think it will work.

You can try this. Have been using for the past 1.5years for PC malware troubleshooting in my office and not an "infection" on my thumb-drive (touchwood).


1. Browse to your removable drive
2. Create a new folder
3. Rename the folder as autorun.inf
4. Now, open the command prompt [how?]
5. In command prompt, change to your drives directory. For example, if your flash drive is labelled I: in My Computer, then type in the command prompt I: and press enter
6. Then type attrib +s +r +h autorun.inf

The last command is to protect and hide your fake autorun.inf and make sure that the file is irreplaceable by the malicious autorun.inf file. Now, next time you plug-in your flash drives on an infected computer, the malicious autorun.inf cannot be copied into your flash drives, thus saving your drives from being a virus carrier afterward. The virus itself, however, might be copied into the drive, but let your anti-virus take care of that.

you also can try hiren boot cd..boot it on pendrive..it effective.

^ This normally does the trick. However it seems that some malware are able to delete it and replace it.