so, my father gave me a thumb drive

[Torvald Von Mansee]

My father passed on to me a thumb drive he got at a trade show. I put into a USB port on my computer, and I got this message that something had been installed and I had to restart my computer for it to take effect. This has made me paranoid. Should I be?

[CaptainHaplo]

Yes and no....

Yes if the thumbdrive actually had something on it.

No if your PC is just telling you that it needs to restart to see the device properly.

However - its VERY rare to have a simple USB stick require a reboot. Do you have a pc you can test on? Take it to the library or something and insert it there - open the drive and see if anything is in it. If its clean - then it was just your pc.

You are running antivirus and such, right?

[Ships-R-Us]

Do a virus and Malware scan.........just format it..........could also be contained in a hidden folder........I'd also be skeptical

[TarJak]

I got a Toshiba USB stick at a trade show and the frikkin thing would not let you look at what was on it until you installed their frikkin viewer.

Even if you blew away the drive and it looked like you removed the software from the drive itself if you reinserted it the software was back on the drive.

No real pain to uninstall the rudely installed viewer on the PC, but a pain to use the drive and have their crap installed everywhere. I binned it after working out what it was doing.

I'd be wary about what it is trying to install. If you have WinXP or better then you shouldn't need to install any drivers to see a USB drive at all.

[Ships-R-Us]

I got a Toshiba USB stick at a trade show and the frikkin thing would not let you look at what was on it until you installed their frikkin viewer.

Even if you blew away the drive and it looked like you removed the software from the drive itself if you reinserted it the software was back on the drive.

No real pain to uninstall the rudely installed viewer on the PC, but a pain to use the drive and have their crap installed everywhere. I binned it after working out what it was doing.

I'd be wary about what it is trying to install. If you have WinXP or better then you shouldn't need to install any drivers to see a USB drive at all.

Tarjak: I had a similar flashdrive like that once. I fixed it by erasing it completely with Heide Eraser and it worked....I hate 3rd party software on my machine.........I use Heide eraser on everything.........NOTHING has been in my Recycle Bin for four years..........