Several weeks ago, I used ClamWin on a thumb drive to check a computer hard drive for suspected viruses. After noting several instances, I terminated the virus check and shut off the computer.
Now my thumb drive will no longer work in any machine. It is not recognized and I cannot get the activity light (for lack of a better term) to glow. I've even attempted to use Windows Manage fuction and format the drive to no avail.
Is the drive toast (I only had ClamWin on the drive at the time (no data) so it is not really a big deal if it is lost)? While I realize I've probably spent more time and effort than it is worth to try to get it working again and I could just buy another one, I would like to save it.
Cameraguy
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on BlueSky
so you used the thumb drive to check for viruses and you found some and THEN put the usb drive in other non infected computers? i will get to this later.
Clamwin portable did not kill your drive. possibly it was one of those instances. if the drive is still under warrenty send it in. if not then you are FSCKED. unless you want to boot to Gparted LiveCD and see if it recognizes the drive and reformat it if it does recognize it. if it cannot format or it doesnt recognise then you are fscked.
Now for a scolding. what where you thinking when you put a thumb drive into a suspected infected computer, found something and then put that drive which may have been infected itself now into another computer. this is how viruses are spread my friend. i only use clamwin portable to scan the thumb drive itself and the contents of the drive when i am on locked computers that have their own AV or ones with DEEP FREEZE. on computers i suspect that are infected i use a BOOT CD or boot to a USB device (if i had one).
I agree that it was probably one of the viruses that killed the drive as opposed to ClamWin. I was just trying to see if it could be salvaged.
Since it is not under warranty and the virus was not further spread, I'll just pitch it.
probibly the best thing to do sadly
to have a software which did kill hardware build of simple things so fast.
You have hardware failure as result of cold solder joint. Thats all.
I have collection of usb sticks, which did work for one day only, others I obtained from reliable sources which failed after hours too.
The more expensive once like my single-level-cell disk2go, I have returned and got new one without question, have just returned one sandisk 8gb and got new one too.
It looks to me, that when I count all the sticks I ever touched, that about 10-20 percent never did the job from beginning.
Opened some of them, found hardware problems as cold solder joints. Those are result of the now world wide regulation to use lead free solder for consumer and industrial grade items.
I am using at work some very small sticks for our embeded server units. We get abt 10% extra sticks with some delivery, just to automatically count for failures. The assembler machine in the production plant seems to be able to produce only cardboard boxes with 250 blister packed sticks in it, it has no ability to check if they really work. The box has to travel from far east to europe, be handled by lots of people who need to live on that too, and I have to get it to a price so can charge our customer 7 usd for stupid slow 2g stick and can still get some salary and my boss and his secretary need to live too...
On those from gray sources es ebay etc, I found the controllers being soldered in by hand! This is clear indication that someone was trying to fake the stick, have one stick with 4gb chips on it, but the controller says it is 16gb.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
but i digress this is getting off topic from the ClamWin Portable. there has been discussions on what to do with deat thumbdrives on the off topic board.