Usb flash drive icon changes into folder icon

This issue may have resulted from a virus infection on the machine the drive was plugged into.

You’ll need to delete the file autoruns.inf located on your flash drive.

By default, Windows hides this file, so before you can delete it you must make a couple of changes (you may reverse these after you’ve finished):

Open My Computer
Tools
Folder Options…
Click on the View tab
Under “Hidden files and folder” choose “Show hidden files and folders”
Remove the tick from “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)
OK

Go back to My Computer and click on your flash drive. If you can’t open it that way, try right clicking on it and choose “Explore.”

Find the autoruns.inf file, right click on it and choose “Delete.” Confirm “Yes.”

Unplug and re-plug the drive in. You should be back to normal.

Hope that helps.

Try a free software named "Flash Disinfector"....Search it on Google. and use this simple little application...it will remove autorun

Just to clear things up, 'autorun.inf' is not a virus.
It is basically the instructions for what any computer needs to do when that device is plugged in.
If it has the instructions, Like 'Play music In WMP', or 'View Pictures', then windows automatically thinks that the drive doesnt need to be explored so it changes it to a folder.
Without Autorun.inf, windows doesnt know what you want automatically, and it will leave it as an explorable drive.

I had that problem and this worked for me. Move everything onto your computer from the flash drive. Then right click on the folder and hit format. Then select quick format and hit ok. This turns it back into and flash drive icon.

Hi, I got the same problem and I noticed that this was related to a dllview.exe pointed by the autorun.inf in the pendrive. Furthermore dllview installs itself as a system service, so you have to delete autorun.inf and the path to dllview specified in the autorun, then you have to go to the service manager in control panel -> administrative tools and disable "dllview Controller", reboot, remove %windir%\system32\drivers\dllview.exe and delete all registry keys containing dllview.exe ( there are some ) except for the one named "Shell" where the value should be set to "Explorer.exe". Hope This Helps

USB icon change into Folder icon is a Virus, I have face the same problem some days ago,

Scan your USB device for viruses,

The refer this site, SmartUSB.net

Hi i had the same problem with my flash drive. This is cause by a virus. I have forefront of my computer and i ran a scan on my flash drive and when i took out my drive and put it in again the problem what solved.

Download http://www.superantispyware.com/?tag=GOOGLE-SUPERANTISPYWARE ive been doing this since 2 pm and this is the only thing that worked for me. keep your flash drive in and run this it will delete everyting, works great

I have a usb flash drive, pqi 2gb.
then, every time i use it, the icon is a folder.
i don't know what kind of virus it is.
help! how to change it back to it's original icon?
what should i do?

My pc was infected with a virus. After running a few hours of disinfecting my computer I also noticed my flash drive icon changed to a folder icon. I removed the autorun.inf removed the flash drive and reinserted. This worked fine. Is autorun.inf the flash drive anything to worry about?