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Would the USB stick have a virus?
I ejected (Remove Hardware) my USB stick from my computer. Then this big virus attack happened and to eep it short, my desktop trned green and in big fat letters it says YOU HAVE BN TAKEN OVR BY A VIRUS.
Well anyway, I quicky took out my USB stick. It's ejected from the computer, (so if you click on My Computer you'd see that it isn't there) but it was still plugged into my computer.
Would the virus have gne into the USB stick or no?
I had to take my comuter to a computer expert and I'll be geting my computer back tomorrow and I paid A LOT of money to get it fixed, but my project is in my USB stick and...after paying that much money, I don't want a virus coming back into my computer!
But techniquely it wasn't in my cmputer, so wuld it have goten the virus transferred?
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Want to answer more questions in the Technology category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Computers?
I don't know if it could have infected your flash drive.. but what you do is, go to the library and go on one of the computers and stick your flash drive in, if the virus things comes up again when you pull it out or whatever you did the first time, then bolt out of there.. if not then your flash drive is fine. =]
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To answer your main question: YES, malwares can infect your USB flash drive and spread to your computer.
Or, if you plug your USB flash drive into an infected system (for example: a computer with virus/worm/spyware/etc. on it) then the malware could have spread to your USB flash drive.
Malware (malicious software) includes viruses, worms, trojan horses, rootkits, spyware, adware, etc., basically any unwanted softwares that cause you unwanted troubles.
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Now, to your computer's problem:
Judging from your computer's condition (according to the information that you've provided), if you have paid "A LOT of money to get it fixed," then you most likely have been "RIPPED OFF a lot of money."
That was NOT a virus; that was probably an ADWARE (some types of adware can be consider as spyware).
I suggest that you try to talk to the ones who were trying to fix your computer and have them lower the price, because removing adwares and spywares isn't very difficult--anyone can do it, even if they know very little about computer.
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As for your USB flash drive, I suggest you take it to someone who knows something about computer to check it, perhaps your computer teacher would be a good candidate.
Manually detecting and removing malware from a USB flash drive is A LOT easier than from an entire computer, because the USB flash drive has a lot less memory than a computer's hard drive. I've done it many times to my friends as well as my teachers; it's very simple. For a 2 GB USB stick with less than 10 directories, it shouldn't take more than 5 or 10 minutes at the slowest.
There are ways for you to do it yourself, too, but you did say that you don't want to risk it so I suppose the best solution is to have someone else check it for you.
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One question though, do you have any anti-virus and anti-spyware software on your computer?
If not, then I suggest you get one. If you don't have the money, don't worry, there are some good free ones out there that you can get. I can suggest a few, if you would preferred.
Hope this helps,
DelusiveVision92 :-)
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somethign similar happened about a week ago to my computer.
the desktop turned green and said the computer was infected, i couldn't change the wallpaper or open task manager, and phony antivirus software got installed onto my computer and kept telling me to download updates or 'buy the full version'.
(i got rid of it with MalwareBytes)
anyway, i doubt you can get a virus on your computer by simply connecting hardware (you'd probably need to open a file from the USB stick first), so you might want to go to My Computer and right click on the USB Drive's icon and select the "scan with [insert your antivirus here] ". if there are any viruses on it, your antivirus shoudl pick it up.
if you're VERY paranoid, get 2 USB sticks. take them to a differnt computer (library? unsuspecting victim? etc.) and plug both in. open your project and copy and paste it into a blank file. save that blank file onto the second USB.
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