Restore files infected with the Quick Heal virus

How do I open or restore a shortcut file from a USB flash drive?

"I have a USB flash drive where I store all my favorite photos and important files. However, this morning when I connected it to my computer, it got infected by a virus, and suddenly all the files turned into shortcuts. I can't access any files, pictures, or folders on my pen drive anymore. I wonder if it's possible to recover shortcut files and how to open shortcut files from the pen drive?"

The Shortcut virus is a Trojan/worm combo that hides files and folders on USB flash drives, external hard disks, and SD storage cards, replacing them with shortcuts bearing the same name. If you connect an infected USB drive to your computer, the virus spreads to your machine and affects your files.

This issue might prevent you from opening or accessing your files, but don't worry. You can recover infected files and shortcuts from your flash drive or other USB storage devices using these two methods.

Video tutorial: How to recover shortcut files.

Solution 1: Restore Shortcut Files via CMD

If the flash drive isn't formatted, shortcut files might be stored on the hardware in a hidden mode. You can recover hidden files using CMD with these steps:

Step 1: Press Windows + R, type in cmd, and hit Enter. Right-click on Command Prompt and select "Run as administrator."

Step 2: Type attrib -h -r -s /s /d *.* and press Enter.

When you're done, you should be able to view your files on the flash drive. If you can't find the file you want, try another method: recover the shortcut with data recovery software.

Solution 2: Recover Shortcut Files with Data Recovery Software

If CMD fails to show hidden files and shortcut links, don't give up. You can use the tool Data Recovery Wizard. This powerful data recovery tool can help you recover files infected by shortcut virus from hard drive and various storage devices like USB flash drive, memory card, USB stick, external hard drive, etc.

Apart from virus attack recovery, data recovery utilities work wonders in retrieving deleted files from USB flash drive or pen drive as well.

Step 1: Select the virus-infected drive to scan

Run an anti-virus file recovery software on your Windows computer. Select the virus-infected disk to scan for lost or hidden files. Note that:

• If the infected files are located on a hidden or deleted hard drive due to a virus, it's best to install the software on another volume or external USB drive to avoid overwriting any data. • If the infected device is an external hard drive, flash drive, or memory card, it's fine to install the software on your computer's local disk.

Step 2: Check all scan results

The "Undelete Wizard" will immediately start scanning your virus-infected hard drive for the deleted or hidden files. To quickly locate the needed files, you can use the "Filter" or "Group by Type" option to display only images, videos, documents, emails, and so on.

Step 3: Preview and recover the deleted/hidden files

Once the scan is complete, you can preview the files that were found. Select the ones you need, then click the “Recover” button. You should save the recovered files to a different secure location on your computer or storage device instead of where they were originally lost.