How to remove shortcut virus that hides files, folders
Computer viruses are the software programs that have the ability to clone itself and can operate without the knowledge or desire of the computer user
If you suddenly can’t find your files or folders in your memory card/flash drive or all your files and folders becomes shortcuts then your drive have been infected with a virus.
The virus hides your folders and files and then creates a shortcut to the files , so all you will see are the shortcuts which is not accessible.
If you go to your folder settings and show hidden files and click on show protected system files, you will see your files but they will still remain permanently hidden.
Mostly people complain I cant find my photos again in my phone, cant find my files again in my memory card, I cant find my files in my flash drive or all my files have turned to shortcut. Yes this was caused by the shortcut virus.
How to Unhide files and Remove Shortcut Virus from your Drive
- Plug in the flash drive or mobile phone to your computer
- Take note of the drives letter label e.g F:, H:, K:, G: etc
- On your computer open command prompt (you can type CMD to search for it or open run and type CMD and click ok)
- Now type in attrib -h -r -s /s /d G:*.* and hit enter (change the g: to the drives letter label in (2) above)
- The above command line will unhide all your hidden files and folders and will remove the shortcuts.
- Finally you should do a full scan on the drive or memory card with an updated antivirus or windows defender on your windows PC.
