Scan USB flash drives

Hi,

I wonder if there is an antivirus that scans automatically or ask you if you would like your flash drive scanned when you connect it. At my university, there is a nasty virus that infects flash drives and i manually scan my flash drive whenever I connect to my computer at home after using the network in the labs but I think it would be a nice feature for those people who would not think to do this.

Does anyone know if there is an antivirus that does this?

 

For one, I have heard of AVG doing it. I'm not sure though. What AV do you have?

And I know NIS 2009 (which I have) does it for removable drives as part of the auto-protect feature under real time protection.

 

Right now, I am on the MSE beta. I used Avast before. I know that it can checks the external drives during the scan but I want it to prompt me when I connect it to my computer.

 

Like THIS?

Check the real time settings in MSE. I think it should be there somewhere.

And yes, afaik, AV' with auto-protect / real time protection enabled could be set to scan / prompt upon inserting the drive.

 

I think all AV's scan removable drives when their plugged in. (not a 100% on that though)

GDATA 2010 prompts to scan removable drives when they'r plugged in.

Cheers.

 

Kaspersky Internt Security 2010 does.

First it ask you whether you want to scan, qucik scan or thoroughly scan it, and then yu can set it to automatic.

 

Like fonduekid, I also use NIS 2009 and it successfully does the job of eliminating any viruses from USB flash drives automatically. However, to be sure, I'd disable Autoplay for USB flash drives. There's a very useful tutorial on doing this selectively on the How-To Geek which you can find here.

I didn't disable autoplay for all devices; just for USB flash drives. To be sure though, I always scan any foreign USB flash drive with NIS 2009 even if NIS automatically detects and processes/deletes any threat. Just make sure its updated.

 

Make sure to disable Autoplay (at least for flash drives) as instructed, I personally find Autorun annoying %99 of the time though.

Every anti-malware that has on-access scanning should automatically scan an executable before it is run.

 

I have disabled autoplay on my laptop. Whenever I use my flash drive on strange computers and networks like at school, I always scan it when i get on my laptop. I also scan my friends' flash drives whenever I connect them to my laptop, found a virus on one of them before. I am kinda paranoid like that but I was just wondering if there was an antivirus that did it.

 

As stated above - KIS 2010 does, but they still haven't fixed the memory leak

 

That's ok, I believe that having good security habits is better than depending on an antivirus but for people like my mother, I was wondering if there was antivirus software that does it automatically.

 

After you tell KIS 2010 to automatuically scan it, it will do so.

I suggest you just try the trial - dowload the regular product from their website, instal it, and then just use the "trial mode" - it should be fully functional for 30 days.

 

Tell me about it....That happens to me a lot at my university as well. Just a couple of weeks ago I had a group presentation and two of my classmates used my notebook to transfer a film via USB flash drive. Scanned both their flash drives and NIS found two Trojans, InfoStealer.lineage, and worst of all, W32Downandup (Conficker Worm). Norton gladly took the liberty of deleting them for me even before the entire scan was over. I guess it's alright to be paranoid about these things. It pays off...