Virus from Thumb Drives

[A McLoughlin]

Recently, My DAW audio PC had a usb thumb drive connected to upload some tracks, now every time I connect an external drive to the machine, a trojan horse and worm get's loaded onto the external drive.

Obviously these "infections" are on the DAW PC, which is only on the net for Cakewalk and NI updates, then disconnected. The machine is optimized for audio production and does not have any virus protection, etc.

I have a copy of Bit Defender and am thinking of installing it to clean up my DAW, then perhaps de-installing it and or disabling it so the DAW is once again optimized for recording.

Does anyone have any better suggestions or solutions to this pesky virus situations.

much appreciated.

[buddha13]

Try using Malwarebytes its free and that usually removes any viruse or trojan. Then make sure you run it on that thumb drive that should fix it.

Here is the link to there site:

Malwarebytes.org

[A McLoughlin]

Thanks Buddha.

A

[gtrman690]

I def. agree with the malwarebytes suggestion. After you run it double check everything to see that you got rid of the virus. The turn your system restore off if you have it on. Then reboot your computer and turn your system restore back on if needed.

The only reason I say is this, is that the registry entries in your system restore images can be affected by the virus with out you knowing. So that will clean it out and get you a fresh clean restore point if you need it

[A McLoughlin]

great suggestion
much appreciated

[A McLoughlin]

That seemed to work well and the software seems pretty transparent and does not take and cpu cycles... so I'll probably leave it installed in a semi-dormant state.

Thanks again!

[spoolboyy]

Sounds like your problem is solved, and I have to agree with the above posters that MalwareBytes is a great piece of software to have in your back pocket.

Another good one for scanning flash drives is ClamWin, it also provides a scan of system Memory to try and kill processes that prevent you from completely removing malware such as Trojans that seem to keep coming back.

-Spool

[John Lance]

Something else to do is to turn autoplay OFF for everything.

Yes, it is inconvenient. Autoplay is one easy vector for viruses to come in on. You insert the CD, USB stick, whatever, and the virus executes.

[DonaldCrader]

Yea Maleware removal is the best solution I also has gone through this procedure and effectively removed the virus from my drive...

[jvwhite]

Try using Malwarebytes its free and that usually removes any viruse or trojan. Then make sure you run it on that thumb drive that should fix it.

Here is the link to there site:

Malwarebytes.org

If you are looking for free alternative of malwarebytes I recommend:
*Spybot Search & Destroy
*ComboFix
*HijackThis

Hope this helps

[rook2c4]

Find out exactly which virus it is - the antivirus programs usually can tell you, even if they fail at eliminating it. Then do research on the web for how to get rid of the particular virus. There's a good chance you're not the only person to get infected with it. Learn all about it, what files it creates and where they are located, what it writes to the registry, etc.

This strategy has helped me several times in the past.