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Damned runauto..

Saturday Feb 09, 2008

Let's curse Windows again.

Recently I had my external hard disk connected to someone else's Windows PC, and when it's back, I see several files in the root folder with names like autorun.exe and autorun.inf etc. I've never been afraid of these files since I don't think they should do any harm to my Mac. The only thing I need to do is removing them and inform the PC user that there's something wrong with his/her computer.

Well, this time, it's a little tougher.

There's a file called "runauto.." that can never be removed, it even cannot be viewed. If I click it in Finder, it disappears, but when I open the folder again, it re-appears again. I try to remove it in a console, the system answers there's no such file or folder. Try Disk Utility to repair the disk, the tools says no error.

So I find a PC from my wife and boot it with the Ubuntu CD-ROM. Connect the hard disk and try all the same steps, and the result is pretty the same. It must be an illegal entry. Since it's only a FAT formatted disk, I'm thinking about starting the ancient Norton Utility DISKEDIT tool to manually rewrite the FAT table. Oh, haven't done that for ...err... 15 years? That's thrill.

But how can I boot a DOS 6?

...

Finally it's removed by running "rm runaut~1" in a Mac console. I find this solution from http://www.archivum.info/alt.comp.anti-virus/2007-08/msg00434.html.

[4] Comments

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Posted at 07:11PM Feb 09, 2008 by wangwj in General
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Hi,

How did you remove runauto from your Mac? It is in my USB drive and comes back despite my friend removing it a few times. I don't know how to run "rm runaut~1".

Does runauto do anything to a Mac?

Regards,
Charlene
Note: Please reply to Charlene2411@yahoo.co.uk

Posted by Charlene on May 21, 2008 at 10:00 AM CST #

Excellent suggestion - I booted Linux and tried "rm runaut~1", but this did not work, and gave a warning that it was a directory. So then I tried "rmdir runaut~1" and, yahoo!, the file is gone from my USB drive.

Posted by Jak on July 18, 2008 at 12:06 PM CST #

Thanks a lot! In my Linux, I just have to run the command "rm -fr runaut~1" and it really works!
Thank you again!

Posted by Caio on November 19, 2008 at 07:49 PM CST #

I had use "rmdir runaut~1 /S" because the folder isn't empty.

Posted by Richard on January 22, 2009 at 07:38 AM CST #