is there a way to check for and remove viruses from a flash drive without plugging it into your computer?

Ofcourse whenever you plug USB before opening check by installed anti-virus
threat will be always less

Originally Posted by chunkmarketing

is there a way to check for and remove viruses from a flash drive without plugging it into your computer?

Yeah, plug it into someone else's computer.

Seriously, I don't know of any way to do a virus check unless you plug it into a computer.

Originally Posted by chunkmarketing

is there a way to check for and remove viruses from a flash drive without plugging it into your computer?

Sure there is - plug the flash drive into someone elses computer and then use their anti virus to scan the drive. That way, if there is a virus on the drive their computer will get infected and not yours.

Connect it to a VPC and you won't have to worry about making your main comp "sick".

A virus on a USB memory "stick" ISN'T going to infect your machine just by plugging it in, you would need to open an infected file first.

Originally Posted by chunkmarketing

is there a way to check for and remove viruses from a flash drive without plugging it into your computer?

[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']Unfortunately there is no way... You must have to plug your USB drive to your computer or anyone's computer Make sure you have an antivirus installed on your machine before accessing this drive[/FONT]

plug it but not open and do virus scan using local antivirus. Plugging in will not infect your PC. That is recommended action before running USB drive on your PC

Originally Posted by chrishirst

A virus on a USB memory "stick" ISN'T going to infect your machine just by plugging it in, you would need to open an infected file first.

This is the safest thing to do. Just make sure you don't click any icons or files inside your USB. I have experienced this before. And I'm glad I didn't clicked any but rather scan it emmediately with my antivirus program.

I have never thought about checking a flash drive for a virus before, it never occurred to me that they could have virus's in them, but i am pretty lucky at not getting virus's.

Actually as soon as there is interaction between your computer and the usb drive there is potential for a virus to try to infect your computer. It has been done before. They may not be very common if Microsoft has patched all foreseeable vulnerabilities in their usb protocols. But new vulnerabilities could always turn up.

Consider that windows has to acknowledge a flash drive has plugged in, scan it, then mount it. In that time even if you haven't opened the drive to view it's folders there's plenty of room for someone to try to hook a virus in some hole windows left in their usb protocol. A virtual machine would help if you're running them in parallel (like Xen, full hardware virtualization) but with software virtualization where you're running one OS on top of the other the main OS is still potentially vulnerable.

You raise an interesting thought though. We now have network attached storage, firewalls, etc.. how long before we have an anti-virus in a box that runs in a network appliance. (although some router's are beginning to include limited anti-virus software)

Just make sure you have the best anti-virus protection you can get (as in NOT the free version of AVG - I recommend eset nod32 personally) and as already said scan the drive before you do anything with it. You do run the risk of being infected but if you have a good heuristic based scanner (like Nod32) you should be protected even in the event of an undefined virus attempting to slip in via your usb connection.

make it a habit to scan your USB first when you plug it to your computer and like they said scan it with the best and latest version of antivirus software.

I have also two Gb flash device....it has caught by virus, when I plug to my pc then all drives hide and did no show any thing ... If you have any solution so tell me. Gaggan

This is exactly what I was thinking when I first read the thread, haha. Great minds think alike

Originally Posted by Moxxnixx

Yeah, plug it into someone else's computer.

You are going to have to plug it into a computer to see what exactly is going on. How do you know you even have a virus on it?

Originally Posted by chrishirst

A virus on a USB memory "stick" ISN'T going to infect your machine just by plugging it in, you would need to open an infected file first.

What about if it infects the files that automatically start up when you put the drive in? (A few of the drives I've had had some like this, seemed to be control programs from the maker that ran in the system tray with eject/etc buttons)

i computer is filled with viruses mainly because of pen drive. it is really sucking, even some virus are not removed after scanning.

Of course, you can never check and detect a virus in your usb drive if it is not connected in a pc. Don't worry because the virus will not immediately infect your computer once usb drive is plugged in, you should first scan the drive with anti virus software before opening any files on it.

Generally virus will propagate from one computer to another through flash drives or floppy discs. If you don't have anti-virus program in your computer, you just like can not take chances unless you are sure the flash drive is from a trusted source. That means the computer from which you are copying data should be free from virus. This is the only option for you.

If you have an Anti Virus software (good ones like Norton, Kapersky etc) installed in your computer and updated with the latest Anti Virus files, then you are safe to plug your flash drive into your computer. But before opening any files, do a comprehensive scan of the drive first.

Once kaspersky deleted all files from my usb flash, and I couldn't do anything with it