How to get Rid of Shortcut Virus - 4 Powerful Methods

The USB shortcut virus is a very popular virus that has been around for a while. It lies under the Trojan category. As you know the importance of USB is increasing day by day. So we need to remove this virus to protect our computers from being infected.

“Shortcut Virus” basically connects itself with removable media devices such as a USB, hard drive, microSD cards, or any removable media you can think of, and replace the original files on the removable media with shortcuts.

We will also discuss how to remove this virus from your computer and from your USB drive. But first, we do have to get the basic knowledge about How this USB Shortcut Virus actually works. How it spreads so quickly. So let’s get right into it.

This virus will hide all the folders in the root directory of the USB and then make a shortcut with the same name as the folder. The creepy thing is that these shortcuts can’t be deleted. These shortcut files have extensions:

• .EXE
• .VBS
• .LNK
• .INI

When the user clicks on any of the shortcuts, the virus will run and be added to the list of programs that start automatically. And here the computer gets infected. I hope you get the point. Whenever the user turns on his/her computer, the virus automatically executes in the background without the user’s knowledge.

So now you have a basic knowledge of, How the USB Shortcut Virus Works?

Now let’s take a look at “How to Remove USB Shortcut Virus“. In the above section, we have provided you with some beginner-friendly solutions to get rid of this annoying Shortcut virus.

This method is easy and useful if you don’t care about the data. When you do a full format, you get rid of everything, including the virus.

To do this, follow the steps below.

• Insert the drive into the USB port of the PC
• Startup “My Computer” Hold down the Windows key and press the letter “E” at the same time to do this.
• Right-click on the USB drive when you find it.
• Choose “Format” from the menu.
• Click “Start” and then confirm.
• This will format and erase all the data on the drive including the virus.

This method is very effective and straightforward. The only downside of this method is your data may be lost because you are formatting the whole drive. So make sure to think twice before performing this action.

If you want to keep the data and also want to remove the virus, then the next solutions might fit perfectly for you.

You can connect your infected drive to a computer that is fully protected by an anti-virus program like Bitdefender, AVG Security, and any other trusted business antivirus or consumer antivirus security software. You can also use Trojan Removal Tool, the Shortcut Virus Fixer, and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware tools.

To do this, you need to follow the steps below.

• First, just download and install Any of the Antivirus Software on your computer.
• Connect the infected USB to your computer.
• Run the software to fix the USB.
• Clean or remove the Virus from the USB. That’s it.

This process is easy and very effective. You don’t have to lose your data. You can easily get rid of the USB shortcut Virus. The only downside of this process is, that you may have to pay for antivirus software. Some antivirus software comes free. But trust me, those are not as much affected as paid ones.

So you have to pay for a monthly or yearly subscription. Or you can use the next method, which does not require any paid tools to get rid of the shortcut virus. You just have to write simple commands to remove the shortcut virus.

This process is a little bit complex and required some effort to remove the virus. Basically, we are going to manually remove the virus. Just follow the steps:

• Open my Computer.
• Open the USB drive that contains the virus.
• On the right-top side of the explorer, you can see a search bar.
• Type “*.LNK” And wait for some time, until you see some result. Now you have to be very careful. Only select the folders. DO NOT SELECT ANY OTHER FILES! And delete these folders permanently.
• And after that, again do this, but this time with “*.VBS” , “*.ini” , “*.exe“…
• And that’s it.

This process is for advanced users. And this method might or might not work for you. The idea behind this process is that we are deleting the folders, that are executable. As you can be familiar with windows folders. Folders are not executable.

So there are high chances that these are not folders but shortcut viruses.

If you don’t want to go with the above methods. Then this might be the last option for you. You can use CMD to remove the shortcut viruses. Just follow these instructions:

Step 1: Open CMD
Step 2: Goto your USB Directory (Eg: “g:” )
Step 3: Type g:*.* /d /s -h -r -s (Replace “g:” With your USB drive name)
Step 4: Press Enter to finish.

That’s all that you can do. Let us know your opinion by posting a comment in the below section.