USB Flash Drive Question

My apologies if this is in the wrong thread, but I'm not sure which category this would really fall under... I figured 'general discussion' would be the safest.

Since getting Windows 7, I've had some interesting experiences with my flash drive... I've never used ReadyBoost on it, I'm always very careful with keeping antivirus definitions up to date, etc etc. But something very strange has cropped up on my flash drive. Just in case is matters; I'm using a 4gb MicroSD inside a tiny USB adapter (makes it nice and small).

When I bring my flash to work and plug it into my XP Pro machine, the autorun doesn't come up anymore, and trying to open it through My Computer shows in a completely new Explorer window, which it never used to do.

Looking on the drive, I see a hidden (i.e., it's grey because I show hidden files) icon of the recycle bin labelled as 'scanme', and my autorun.inf contains the following:

Code:

;é?????ämü??Í??à?s?ìõl???Q?I?O
[autorun
;fw?ALÊ???s&ÖOðsb?îvýðÞ
open=scanme/scanme32.exe

(rest of code removed as my NOD32 keeps closing this page now with a warning)

I somehow doubt this is normal for flash drives, and Windows 7 shouldn't affect it in this way, should it? I could backup my data and format, but is this really something I should be worried about? AVG (at home) and NOD32 v4 (at work) both say it's clean, and autorun still works on my Windows 7 PC... But it's a bit frustrating and confusing to say the least.

Also, I must note that a Google search for "scanme32.exe" as referenced in the autorun doesn't return anything, the closest is "scan32.exe" as part of the McAfee AV suite, but I don't use any computers with that on anyway..

Any ideas?

PS: If I try delete either file, I get no errors, but they are back again when I remove and reconnect my flash drive to my XP machine.

I have over a dozen USB flash drives... never seen this b4! Since it doesnt take long to format, yeah I'd say drag your data to a safe location and format the flash drive... should cure your ills!

I'm wondering if it couldn't be the 2 different os's, 2 different anti virus scans one set up for xp and other for Win 7, just trying to think of reasons for error.

Anything with a recycle bin icon and the text scanme sounds extremely fishy to me.

I would suggest you scan the XP machine thoroughly first. Seems you might have something undesirable there.
Running a full scan on the 7 machine is also recommended.

A few questions/thoughts:

1. Have you at any point used this flash as a bootable drive?
2. The issue isnt 2 different OS'es... I swap my flash drives between OS'es all the time with zero issues.
3. Backup and formatting a flash is easy... just try it and see if this happens again.
4. What version of Win7 and where did you pick it up?
5. We used to use AVG at the college I teach at... seen too many bugs get past it... therefore I no longer use it. NOD32 is a great "basically unknown" AV with a very small footprint, it should have caught any malware on your flash drive when u scanned at work.
6. So I doubt it is infected... but it is indeed a bizarre one!

PLease keep us informed as to your progress.

Darryl Licht said:

A few questions/thoughts:

1. Have you at any point used this flash as a bootable drive?
2. The issue isnt 2 different OS'es... I swap my flash drives between OS'es all the time with zero issues.
3. Backup and formatting a flash is easy... just try it and see if this happens again.
4. What version of Win7 and where did you pick it up?
5. We used to use AVG at the college I teach at... seen too many bugs get past it... therefore I no longer use it. NOD32 is a great "basically unknown" AV with a very small footprint, it should have caught any malware on your flash drive when u scanned at work.
6. So I doubt it is infected... but it is indeed a bizarre one!

PLease keep us informed as to your progress.

Darryl you are probably right, the thing i saw in first post its not a reg flash drive, it's an SD card put into a usb card reader was why i thought it might be the problelm.

I have seen this before. The flash memory is going bad, I have had several MicroSD go bad once I started using them on my computer. Worked great in my phone and camera but once I used it a lot it started doing what yours is doing. I formatted it many times and tried many things, ultimately replacing it fixed it. I read somewhere on line a while back that the MicroSD were prone to early failure.

XP machines at work right? Are you in a domain at work? Perhaps your system admin can shed some light on this issue... Seems very strange that you format at either location and you are fine (no scanme file) until you stick it in the XP machine!