Remooving U3 from USB drive.

[Robin Laing]

Rick Stevens wrote:
> Beartooth wrote:
>> On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 07:56:51 -0500, Aaron Konstam wrote:
>>
>>> A question which appeared on fedora-list recently was how to remove U#W
>>> from a USB drive. I did not see a resolution until the following web
>>> link:
>>>
>>> http://www.u3.com/uninstall
>>
>>     I've been trying to do that, and have a long thread going at
>>
>> http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewforum.php?id=1
>>
>> called "How to wipe thumbdrives??"

>>
>>     There is one post in that thread with a technique using dd; I 
>> haven't tried it yet, but probably will.
> 
> I have a couple of those buggers as well.  I think the dd you're
> thinking of is something like:
> 
>     dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=2048
> 
> or something like that...the idea being to write zeros to the entire
> drive, wiping out its partition table and all.
> 
> It does NOT work on the SanDisk Cruzers.  I ran the dd three times on
> each, writing all 4GB of data to them (took forever!).  Fired up fdisk
> and it reported a gparted-type partition table on them.  The partition
> table should have been wiped out via the dd.
> 
> I then ran gparted itself.  It did NOT complain about a missing
> partition table (it should have), but it did say there were no defined
> partitions.  Whoopee.  Yeah, no partitions, but a gparted-style
> partition table that can't be done away with.  Sheesh.
> 
> <snip>
> 
>>     If I could find non SanDisk Cruzer thumbdrives here, I'd never buy 
>> another.
> 
> I now buy nothing but PNY or Apacer thumbdrives.  If I'm in doubt and
> if the package says that something's preloaded, I treat them like
> toxic waste.

All I can say is that users should complain to the manufacturers and see 
about getting refunds.  For a $20 drive it doesn't seem worth the 
effort.  Enough complaints could be enough to get some success.

I have contacted Sandisk and said I won't purchase any products until I 
see a way to remove this virus without having Windows.

Note that the U3 site does ask for a reason for removing the software. 
I have complained a couple of times.  There was even a thread on their 
forum about a Linux tool.  That was a waste of time.

If you search, there are U3 key loggers and other nasties available.


-- 
Robin Laing