A 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.
![Commands-for-changing-folder-icon-in-pendrive [image]Commands-for-changing-folder-icon-in-pendrive](http://media.techwithric.com/img/Commands-for-changing-folder-icon-in-pendrive.png)
- One last step is to goto your My Computer Window and rename the pen drive. eg:
![renaming-pendrive [image]renaming-pendrive](http://media.techwithric.com/img/renaming-pendrive.png)
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?
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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
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
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
Twitter: techwithric
says:
Download unlocker(http://www.filehippo.com/download_unlocker/) and install it. Then before executing the del autorun.inf step, just explore (not open) your pen-drive and right click autorun.inf and select unlock. That should do it.
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
Twitter: techwithric
says:
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.
Twitter: techwithric
says:
Could you specify the exact error you’re getting?