Following Jim's article on rescuing a hobbled PC using a rescue disk/USB pen drive here:
https://davescomputertips.com/how-to-clean-malware-from-an-unbootable-or-unusable-system/
I just tried the ESET version by creating a USB boot drive and ran the program which is a small Linux based OS in itself. Before booting I inserted a suspect pen drive of a friend which MSE had flagged as containing a nasty virus (MBM found nothing) which was responsible for deleting a few thousand files on the pen drive.
I updated the virus database and ran a scan, but no threats were found. I had earlier found the supposed deleted files through Linux Mint (Windows showed an empty pen drive) and copied them to a new Mint desktop folder, after which I burned a DVD.
The same virus appears to have been responsible for deleting his daughter's files on her pen drive too, so I'll have to clean the main PC pronto as well as isolating the pen drive before formatting it.
I can't remember the name of the virus but I should be able to look at the MSE history.
Opening cmd and entering attrib -h -r -s /s /d g:\*.* where g is the pen drive letter makes all the files visible.
Interesting!!
This sounds like an actual "virus", one of the original types of infections that have been around for ages and were designed to inflict damage rather than spy or collect data.
Detecting traditional or established malware is MSE's strength. I'd guess that this virus has been floating around for years, passing from pen drive to system to pen drive.
That's pretty much what my mate said Jim because his daughter was doing a school project at various friends' houses and they swap pen drives as you do.
Not apportioning blame of course; these things happen, like fleas jumping from one dog to another as it were.
It was the Gamarue.ar worm which MSE picked up and removed.
http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/threat/encyclopedia/entry.aspx?Name=Win32%2fGamarue&wa=wsignin1.0
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