How to make the autorun.inf???

                 How to make the autorun.inf???

Autorun.inf is NOT a virus...
This article is about autorun.inf file which is used by most of the viruses and to beat these kind of viruses we can use this same file as a security measure.
let's see how can we do that...



Autorun.inf is a file used to tell windows about what should happen if a specified action takes place in the respective drive.
Example: A virus is programmed to copy itself to a removable media and make an autorun.inf inside the removable drive. The autorun.inf has information that whenever user OPEN the drive the virus should be infected.

But autorun.inf's have various other uses that are quite nice.
Out of which we are going to use:

1. assigning a drive icon to the drive...(this feature is available in vista)

So here you have to make a custom icon (or copy from other source) for your drive , which should be 16*16 px Or 32*32 px Or 64*64 px etc etc...
you can also use any game's icon if you dont want to make one. you can find there icons in the directory in which they are installed.
For example : I previously used GTA's icon for my games drive. :D

You can use third party software like tune-up utilties to change our drive icons but we will discuss advantage of "this" method later.

How to make the autorun.inf???

1. 1]first open any text editor (like notepad)
2. 2]type [autorun] (with square brackets and press enter)
3. 3]on next line type icon=lovelyicon.ico (where lovelyicon.ico is name of your icon image)
4. 4]now goto file >> save as >> autorun.inf >> make text documents to all files >> save

The text document should look like below:
*************************************

[autorun]

icon=lovelyicon.ico

*************************************
now copy this autorun.inf file and paste it in all drives...
now copy your icon files , paste it in the drives and rename it to lovelyicon.ico

restart computer.

after restarting You should see the icons for your drives .





But what is the security part ????


we know , no antivirus is perfect !!!
If you got infected by a virus which makes autorun.infs in drives to infect then lets see how you will be alerted...

the process takes place like this...
Virus infected >> he made his own autorun.inf >> hence our autorun.inf got replaced >> our autorun.inf has information to display icons >> that information will be lost >> hence after next restart the icons will be change to default drive icons >> so before opening any of the drives you will be able to know that our autorun.inf is replaced... >> hence you understand "something" is there...



I have problems saving the autorun.inf file !!!

majority of times you may get errors saving files to the drives.
reasons may be:

1. 1]you are already infected with some viruses which already have created there autorun.infs with read only attributes.
2. 2]the virus process running in the background may keep replacing our autorun.infs with there ones...
3. 3]you have a third party software like USB disk security which is preventing it from saving it in drive.
4. 4]you dont have permissions to write any file in the drive

solutions !!!

one and foremost solution is getting a good and updated antivirus and scan the whole system
After scanning most of the antiviruses delete the virus files but won't delete its autorun.infs.
to delete it manually do the following steps.
open my computer >> goto tools >> folder options >>view >> click show hidden files anduntick hide protected operating system files >> click ok

now we can see the hidden autorun.inf in the drives. go and delete. if you have problems in deleting autorun.inf. download a tool called unlocker from filehippo.com and then delete it through unlocker.

after deleting autorun.inf , hide protected operating system files again...


What are its advantages ???

These types of icons can be achieved through many softwares. These softwares makes some registry changes and display the icons.
advantages of this method:

1. 1]As this method deals with autorun.inf we get a measure to prevent ourselves from malwares as shown in the whole post.
2. 2]When we connect our hard drive (as slave) to other OS , our drives retain there icons which cannot be achieved through Third party utilities which use registry changes.
3. 3]We always get a good feeling when we detects a foreign autorun.inf and we remove it successfully :)

What are its disadvantages ??

As far as I am concerned , the disadvantage is that when you format a drive then the icon of that drive gets lost. No matter a small backup of both files can do a lot.