Pen drive, USB gadgets, SD Cards or Flash drives are an exceptionally regular gadget to exchange information starting with one PC then onto the next.
Now and then we get errors while interfacing Pen drive to Computer, and during information exchange and one of them is Shortcut Error.
Primarily this virus is known as Shortcut virus, and it changes every document into a shortcut.
This article will manage you to expel easy route infection from your flash drive and also PC.
What is Shortcut Virus?
A shortcut virus is a deadly combination of worm and Trojan and is capable of hiding your files and folders, create shortcut keys and lastly replace the original data with shortcuts that look identical.
As a worm, it is capable of reciprocating itself and behaves stealthily as a Trojan infection.
Shortcut virus is a nasty creation of cyber criminals and effects portable devices when connected to a contaminated computer system. Additionally on the other hand, if your PC is infected with Shortcut virus, any USB drive that you link to it will also get infected with shortcut virus.
This deadly virus is spreading its roots worldwide. It hides in fake shortcuts and keeps swapping themselves with original files.
When a user clicks on these shortcut files, this dangerous malware starts duplicating itself and produces more virus on the system resulting in loss of data, degraded system performance, system irregularities and slow running speed.
Cybersecurity experts keep coming up with advanced forms of antivirus programs from time to time. However, highly malicious shortcut virus remains undetected from most of the security programs.
Keep reading this article to cope up with this situation and fix all issues associated with Shortcut virus.
Types of Shortcut Virus
- Flash drive shortcut virus: As a pure Trojan virus it consolidates all the files available on your portable device and places them in a hidden folder, post which it creates shortcut file named Flash Drive shortcut.exe.
On successful execution, it installs harmful programs which spy and steal your details and information.
- Files and folder shortcut virus: This replicates, hides and replaces your files and folders with shortcuts files like shortcut.exe, shortcut. Ink etc. Post-execution it reproduces itself and places malicious virus to carry out dreadful activities.
Remove Shortcut Virus
Agreeing with the presence of this nasty virus is not suitable for system health. Make sure that you take all possible actions in your capacity to get rid of it as soon as possible.
Below mentioned are few ways by which you can remove it.
Remove Shortcut virus using CMD
Cited below is the detailed procedure to remove shortcut virus using the CMD option. This method removes the virus from all types of portable devices including pen drive, flash drives, hard disk, memory cards and mobile phones. Just follow the given procedure:
- From the startup menu open command menu. Go to Start-Run-CMD.
- Enter the name of the drive from which you wish to remove the virus.
- Type command and press Enter key(attrib -h -r -s /s /d e:*.* (assume e is the Drive Label )
- Successful completion will remove all virus from your computer system.
Use WINRAR to Get Original Files
If you still notice shortcut virus on your PC after using the CMD option, you may try using the WINRAR method to recover lost files. Just follow the below-given instructions.
- Open the WINRAR Application.
- Look out for your Pen drive location or infected Folder location.
- Copy Files and Paste in a preferred place
- Format your Pen drive finally to eradicate the virus.
Shortcut Virus Remover
The Shortcut virus is mostly found in the Task Manager Process. If can easily be found and removed by deleting the “Wscript.vbs” files.
Use Anti virus programs
Use of a sophisticated antivirus tool will efficiently scan, detect and remove shortcut virus from your PC. Download the best antivirus for windows 7 to ensure complete system security and data safety.
Precautions to Avoid Shortcut-Virus:
In addition to the removal process below mentioned are few precautions that can be taken to avoid Shortcut-virus from Entering into your devices,
- 1 Disable the Autorun facility to prevent pen drive run automatically
- 2 Always scan the pen drives for the virus before using them.
- 3 Avoid using Pen drive in Public PC’s.
- 4 Don’t visit shady and harmful websites.
- 5 Keep your Antivirus updates with latest security patches.
