Thumb Drive Virus Protection

If you ever share thumb drives with a friend or co-worker, there’s a good chance they might infect your computer via their thumb drive. If your friend’s computer has a virus that can be transmitted via thumb drive, when they pass the drive to you, it may automatically run and infect your computer.  The trick is to turn off AutoPlay for all drives on your computer. Here’s how:

On most versions of Windows (for example, Windows XP Professional, Vista Ultimate):
1. Click Start, Run, enter gpedit.msc
2. XP users: Open Computer Configuration – Administrative Templates – System,
Vista users: Open Computer Configuration – Windows Components – AutoPlay Policies;
3. Find Turn Off AutoPlay in the right-hand pane and double-click it.
4. Choose Enabled and set it for All drives.

Or, in any Windows version:
1. Launch the Registry editor Start – Run – regedit)
2. Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
3. Double-click NoDriveTypeAutoRun in the right-hand pane and set its value to hexadecimal FF. (To turn it back on, change the value to 91)