A couple of months ago our PC got infected with some fake Platinum security virus and it cost us a couple of hundred quid to have a man in to fix it.
Mrs imp just put a USB stick in and low and behold the shit is sitting there on it!
First time around it got past the Microsoft anti virus.
This time around we have AVG Free which spotted it and neutralised it. But didn’t actually delete it. Its still there and I am afraid to put the stick back in the PC.
Other than taking a hammer to the thing, is there a safe way to wipe the drive?
We have a Mac, would this be less prone to contracting the virus while performing the surgery?

You paid >£200 to have it fixed??!!

Send it this way, I’ll gladly fix it for £150 🙂

Edit: Sorry, forgot to add any helpful advice – Macs can’t get infected by PC viruses, so assuming there’s only PC viruses on the USB stick, you’ll be fine to plug it in to the mac to wipe.

Unless there’s anything vitally important on it, smash the stick and buy a new one.

There’s a guy long the road will for it for £149

There’s a guy long the road will for it for £149

reported

<edit> Arghh I’ve just broken the rule by re posting the lower price.I’ll report myself.

As legend said. USB drives are cheap as, so chuck it, or erase it on the Mac. I recently bought a tiny little Sandisk drive, size of my thumbnail, 32Gb, for £15. I don’t even bother erasing my camera cards now, just put a new one in when one’s full up, keep it as back-up.

Hammer it is then.

hammer is safest way. Alternatively set your machine not to autorun USB sticks when you put them in and then use something like CCleaner to wipe the drive