USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

hey guys i have been having this weird problem for a long time. So i put in my usb drive, so it shows up in my computer. But when I double click on it, it just hangs and doesnt do anything, the mouse looks like its loading something but nothing happens, so I have to enter the drive letter into the address bar and then it works. Any idea how to make it work by double clicking.
- this only happens with removable drives, not disk drives.
- WinXP PRO SP3

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

anyone?....b u m p

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

Hello,

1. First of all, Enable the option "Show hidden files" and uncheck the option "Hide protected Operating system files.
[You may also wish to undo these steps later after this procedure is completed.]

2. Then check the root of the USBdrive for any file with the name "autorun.inf" (Of course you will need to enter the drive letter in address bar).

3. Now open the autorun.inf file in any text editor and look for paths to programs in the file. If this autorun.inf is from untrusted source, then delete all the programs that have an entry in autorun.inf and delete autorun.inf also later. Then "Safely remove" your USB drive. Next time you put your USB drive in, it should work without problems.

Hope this helps...
AmbrNewlearner

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

Thanks for reply, didn't work : (
I tried somethings with the autorun and even tried removing it and testing but same problem. Here's whats inside the autorun.inf.

[autorun]
open=driver\usb\–��¼‡‘Š•†‘Í€ŒŽ
action=Open
shell\open=Open
shell\open\command=driver\usb\–��¼‡‘Š•†‘Í€ŒŽ
Usb_Driver installed

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

Hello,

Does this means that you have deleted the autorun.inf file?
Or maybe autorun.inf is being REcreated each time (by some malicious process running on your computer) you plug in your USB drive (?) Because the only thing (causing this problem) that comes to my mind immediately is autorun.inf. There can surely be other factors causing this, though.
Also, your autorun.inf contains weird characters. What do you think does this means? Any ideas? :)

And yes, Welcome to bytes.com!

AmbrNewlearner

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

Hello,

I thought of checking the autorun.inf file in Windows XP by putting it on my pendrive. As soon as I tried to create and save an autorun.inf with the contents of your autorun.inf file, Avast anti-virus reported that the file acts as a Malware Generator. So, it is better to get rid of the autorun.inf on your pendrive by deleting it immediately. Also, you should make it sure that there should be no process running on your system that REcreates it (I'm sure that there should be one such process on your PC).

If it gets recreated on deletion, then tell us details about this in your next reply. We will then help you to remove/delete malicious process.

AmbrNewlearner

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

Hello,

I uploaded the autorun.inf file to VirusTotal and got this result(s).

Atleast 8 different AntiVirus engines detect the file as malicious (including Avast, McAfee, Microsoft etc. Mind you, these are trustworthy Antiviruses. They don't produce false alarms frequently).

AmbrNewlearner

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

Hey thanks, but OMG, I tried editing autorun.inf, deleting and it keeps coming back. And thus same problem.

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

someone help plz [ b.u.m.p ]

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

Hello,

Can you post a screenshot of "Processes" tab in task manager?

AmbrNewlearner

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

Hi buddy try to google........flash-disinfector .
its a freeware...Run the program while the usb flash drive get connected.

re: USB Drives Wont OPEN! Help

Hello,
I don't think this has got something to do with malicious flash files. And so, Flash disinfector is not going to help IMHO.

AmbrNewlearner