Can't access my external HDD via double-click!!!

A few weeks ago, I bought a Seagate Portable 2.5" 120 GB HDD for my laptop. Everything worked from the start with no problems. This Saturday, my brother borrowed it and used it to copy some files from a friend of his and the next day, I tried to use it on mine and once hooked up, I got a virus warning and that it was deleted. The virus name was sxs.exe which seems to be a hacktool to copy dial-up passwords and some chinese chat program. Anyway, after the warning, the autoplay function (the thing that reads the contents of a new drive when inserted) halted my computer to a crawl and it used 100% of the computer, left it there for 10 min and nothing happened so I restarted the computer. After that, I can't double click the drive from my PC, it asks me for what software to use to run this program, but I can access it if I right-click>open or explore, but not if I double click it. It's not such a big issue but I was wondering if anybody would know how to fix it.

 

Uhhhmmm.... help?

 

Have you tried formatting it?

 

Boy I can't tell you how many times I've heard of this story...

My advice at this point is to reformat as suggested. You can do so thru Windows Explorer, just right click on the external HDD and select format. Do a thorough format, not quick. If that doesn't work, you can also use your HDD as a projectile to throw at your brother and his friend.

 

The drive works, I have to go through right click > explore or open to go into the drive. Any other way to fix it besides reformatting?

 

Well there probably would be other ways, there is most probably a virus on there that is stopping you from giving you direct/100% access to it so the best solution in my opinion would be to backup all the possible files you can, that aren't infected and format.