Wednesday, June 19, 2013
 

How to Fix : Virus Converting Pen Drive Icon to Folder Icon

[image]Pendrive-icon-as-folder-iconA pen drive (or more officially USB Flash drive) is one of the most commonly used data storage devices. The versatility and ease of use provided by it is unmatched. And as it is being widely used, it’s also become a rather favorite target for viruses. One of the most annoying viruses is the one which converts the pen drive icon into a folder icon and on double-clicking it, it shows the ‘Open With’ window. So here’s how to remove this problem.

Of course the best way to solve this problem is to format the pen-drive. However this will lead to loss of data in it. The following method shows you how to solve this problem without formatting:

  • Firstly, goto Start => Run (or Start+R)
  • Now type the drive of your pen drive followed by semi-colon (eg. my pen drive’s drive is ‘J’. Then enter ‘J:’ – without the quotes)
  • Now type

    attrib autorun.inf

    and press Enter. This is to verify whether the file is present.

  • Now type the following command:

    attrib -h -r -s autorun.inf

    and press enter. This removes the hidden attribute of autorun.inf file.

  • Now type the last command

    del autorun.inf

    this deletes the above-mentioned file. [image]Commands-for-changing-folder-icon-in-pendrive

  • One last step is to goto your My Computer Window and rename the pen drive. eg:
    [image]renaming-pendrive

    Rename pen drive (you can use F2 key)

That’s it your done. Your pen drive has now been cleaned and you can use your pen drive normally, as you could do before. Piece of cake, wasn’t it?

 

About the Author

This post was written by . Richie is a computer engineering student and the founder of techwithric.com. He blogs on softwares, wordpress, web-design, start-ups and random thoughts! He's also a author at Devil's Workshop. Follow him on twitter @richiesajan.

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Comments: 9

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  • Chirasree

    hey richie,
    thanx for the tips.
    i’m facing a strange problem. a few days back when i put my pendrive in, i faced the problem discussed above. so getting a little worked up i contctd my cuzn who handles my pc. on his advice i stopped connecting the pendrv to ly pc n tuk it to his. wen i checked there, there was NO issues with it whatsoever!! he concluded tht it must b in my pc. all these days i haven’t connected my pendrive to my pc…but today i did so, just outta curiosity. And well, nothing happened!! this problem dint recur an everything went well. please help. should i format my pc?? coz da back up of a lotta data will have to be taken then. pretty time consuming it is :(

     
     
     
  • Chirasree

    hey richie,
    thanx for the tips.
    i’m facing a strange problem. a few days back when i put my pendrive in, i faced the problem discussed above. so getting a little worked up i contctd my cuzn who handles my pc. on his advice i stopped connecting the pendrv to ly pc n tuk it to his. wen i checked there, there was NO issues with it whatsoever!! he concluded tht it must b in my pc. all these days i haven’t connected my pendrive to my pc…but today i did so, just outta curiosity. And well, nothing happened!! this problem dint recur an everything went well. please help. should i format my pc?? coz da back up of a lotta data will have to be taken then. pretty time consuming it is :(

     
     
     
  • dot

    hi
    i do everything as done in the above(picture)
    on the last command,
    its says cannot do this bla bla, because files in use????

    please help thank you

     
     
     
  • first go to run then press CMD enter
    then your drive name with : e.g H: then enter
    now type
    attrib autorun.inf then enter
    then attrib -h -r -s autorun.inf and enter
    now del autorun.inf then enter
    now go to my computer rename the name of ure pendrive,,DONE

     
     
     
    • That’s exactly what I wrote in the post :)

       
      • What should I do if the autorun.inf is not accessible??
        somehow it was blocked by something..
        help Me, Please ..
        Thx a Lot. :)

         
  • Thank you ….

     
     
     
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