HOW TO REMOVE SHORTCUT VIRUS

" How to remove shortcut virus ? " you will listen this question day to day. whenever someone purchase a new flash drive ( Pen drive) , he will definitely face the problem of shortcut virus. You will insert flash drive in your computer and when you will open , only shortcuts of the file will be seen . your files will become unaccessible. Same problem comes with the hard drive of the computer if it is infected with the shortcut virus.

So , in this post , i will discuss the solutions of this well known problem.

WHAT IS A SHORTCUT VIRUS?

In easy way , we can define that a virus which hides your original files inside created shortcuts is called shortcut virus. The original file is present within the drive but, due to this virus, you can't access it.

SOURCES OF THE SHORTCUT VIRUS: 

There may be many reasons of shortcut virus , but some well known reasons are followng:

1. if you connect your flash drive or external hard drive to someone's pc which is already
     infected with shortcut virus.
2. sometimes we download free softwares from internet . but it may be infected with virus.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SHORTCUT VIRUS

There are three types of shortcut virus:
1. File related shortcut virus
2. Folder related shortcut virus
3. Drive related shortcut virus

Now, i will explain them one by one:
1. FILE RELATED VIRUS

This type of virus creates shortcut of your computer's program files. After executon it can harm the files related to the program file.

2. FOLDER RELATED SHORTCUT VIRUS

This type of virus creates shortcut of the folders present in the drive . This is very harmful when connected to internet . It can upload data of that particular folder.

3. DRIVE RELATED SHORTCUT VIRUS

This type of virus is most harmful . it creates shortcut of the whole drive.

Some basic safety measures for protecting your drive from shortcut virus :
* Never open your flash drive (Pen drive) via autorun .
* Always open your flash drive and hard drive by right click . After that click on explore or you can type the name of drive in the windows address bar.

METHODS TO REMOVE SHORTCUT VIRUS

There are three methods by which you can remove shortcut virus from your PC or flash drive.

Method 1: HOW TO REMOVE SHORTCUT VIRUS USING COMMAND PROMPT (CMD) ?

For this you have to follow the steps:
1. At first go to start and type "RUN " > Type CMD
     Now command prompt will open.
2. Just type the following commmand :
     attrib -h -r -s/s/D <Name of your drive>:\*.*
     suppose name of the drive is "G" then the command will be
     attrib -h -r -s/s/D G:\*.*
     Now press Enter.
3.  Now an unnamed folder will be created on your drive . This folder will contaiin all of the
      data that was hidden due to infection of shortcut virus.
4. Copy the recovered data on your computer where you want to save it.
5. Now, you can format the infected drive.

METHOD 2 : HOW TO REMOVE SHORTCUT VIRUS USING SHORTCUT VIRUS REMOVING TOOL?

There are many shortcut virus remover tools available on internet . you can download and use it.
Some of them are Trojan remover tool , Shortcut virus fixfolder, RKill, Roguekiller, Malwarebytes,SmadAV antivirus.

In this way , now you have the solution of " How to remove shortcut virus ? "

Thanks
 Er. Raju Ranjan