How To Remove Shortcut Virus Without Formatting or Any Data Loss
A shortcut virus is a virus that Enters into your USB flash drive, Hard Disk drive, Memory cards or mobile phone and changes your files into shortcuts with the original folder icons. The logic behind your folder becoming shortcuts is that this virus hides your original folders/files in the same removable media and creates the shortcut with the same name. If you are also getting the only Shortcut folder when inserting the USB drive, memory card on the computer. And looking for a solution to get rid of this virus, Here we have some tips to remove shortcut viruses without format the drive or without any data loss.
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What is a Shortcut Virus?
A Shortcut Virus is a kind of Trojan and worm combination that hides all of your files and folders then replaces them with shortcuts that look identical to the originals. These types of viruses mainly affect physical file transfer devices like USB flash drives, external hard drives, and SD memory cards but they can be transferred to computers when you expose an infected device.
We all know Computer Virus infection is only removed through antivirus programs. But this time we are talking about Shortcut Virus, Which is a new modern virus that automatically comes in your computer/USB/SD card and converts your content into a shortcut. And many shortcut viruses remain undetected by antivirus software.
How to Remove shortcut virus USB?
If you have a USB flash drive, external hard drive, or SD memory infected with shortcut virus Here’s how to remove the infection from the external device.
Remove Shortcut virus using CMD
Using Command Prompt to remove a shortcut virus and recover files is the best way and there are 95% Possibilities of virus removal. This Method Removes Shortcut viruses from USB flash drives, Memory cards, PC, Hard disks, and even Mobiles.
Click on start menu type cmd select command prompt right click and run as administrator.
Now insert the virus-affected USB drive (External Drive). And note down virus affected drive name (your system drive, USB drive or memory card drive letter name)
Type command as shown below attrib -h -r -s /s /d F:*.*
Note: Here F: is My system drive letter which is affected by the shortcut virus.
Command explained:
Attrib is an MS-DOS command Which helps us to alter the properties of file/folder.
-h stands for “remove hidden” -r stands for “remove read-only” -s “unmark system”.
/s makes the command recursively apply to all files and folders in the current directory and all subdirectories—basically the entire device in this case.
/d makes the command apply to folders as well (normally attrib only handles files).
*.* means all file names and folder names should be considered a match.
Now press enter key and wait for a few seconds to complete the command. After complete, the command checks your drive, your Shortcut files again convert to normal files. Delete unknown files from your storage after the command process completes. when you got your files, just copy your files somewhere and format your USB Drive.
Method 2 To Remove Shortcut Virus
Actually, the shortcut virus is running in the task manager process > You may kill that process and your computer doesn’t create again shortcut in realtime.
Right-click on Taskbar and select Task Manager. Now on Task manager > Select process (More detail) > Scroll down below and search “wscript.vbs” process > Select them and end task
If the Drive gets infected again and again even after following the above-given methods, Just Install Antivirus and do a Boot-Time Scan, using this will remove all the malware in boot Time.
Use shortcut virus remover tool
Also, you can use free third-party shortcut remover tool to scan your computer and find out all the shortcut viruses as well as invalid shorts to delete them for good.
You can download Shortcut Virus Remover here for free.
Remove Shortcut Virus using Registry Tweak
You can also remove the shortcut virus using Registry tweak.
To do this first open Run by pressing Win+R keys Here type regedit and hit Enter. This will open the Registry Editor window.
Now In the top left pane of the registry editor, navigate to the following key.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run
Here on the right pane Look for the registry key odwcamszas, WXCKYz, OUzzckky, just right-click on it and delete it. That’s all, Close registry and Restart windows to make changes effective.
How to Avoid your drive from Shortcut Virus
Disable Autorun, So that Pendrive won’t run automatically
Scan for virus and then use the Pendrive.
Don’t use Pendrive in Public PC’s
Don’t use Harmful websites
Keep your Antivirus up to date
Note: If you know your PD is infected with a virus, don’t double-click on it. Try to browse it using right-click or try to open it in a new window. Double-clicking runs the “Autorun.inf” which is mostly accompanied by a virus. Inside Autorun.inf there are commands written which finally execute your virus. Hence double-clicking an infected PD runs your virus and infects the PC.
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