Remove USB Virus That Replaces Files with Links

USB viruses are one of the most common virus types and I recently caught one on my Pendrive. It is a virus that hides all the files on your drive and creates a link named “Removable Drive (16GB).lnk”. However, this virus is not as scary as it seems. It doesn’t delete your files or encrypt them. Instead, it creates a hidden folder and moves all the files into that folder. Here I will show you how to remove this virus from your USB drive.

How To Clean Your USB Drive

Here are the steps to remove a USB virus that hides all your files from your USB drive:

  1. Open a command prompt (Windows Key + R, then type cmd and press ENTER)  and navigate to your drive by typing drive letter and semicolon like F: then press ENTER. Use your own drive letter here.
  2. Run this command attrib -s -r -h *.* /s /d /l
  3. Open a windows explorer window, navigate to your USB drive and search for ".".
  4. You will see all of your files in search results. Right-click one of them and select "Open Containing (Destination) Folder".
  5. Navigate to the top folder containing all your files and move all of them to your desktop.
  6. Now that you saved your files, it is safe to format the USB drive.
  7. Right click on the USB drive and select Format..
  8. Select Quick Format and press Start
  9. Restore your files from Desktop back to your USB drive if you need to.

I hope this guide was helpful in solving your virus problem. If it didn’t help, please share the details in the comment area below.

[seealso ids=”819,7823,7968″]

Virus Detailed Information

And for reference here is a list of all files added by the virus:

E:Removable Drive (16GB).lnk
E:ÿ
E:System Volume Information
E:ÿ--_-_-----____------___------_____-_---_____-__-_--____.--_-_-----____------___------_____-_---_____-__-_--____
E:ÿdesktop.ini
E:ÿIndexerVolumeGuid
E:System Volume InformationIndexerVolumeGuid
E:System Volume InformationWPSettings.dat

I hope this solution solved your problem. If you like this post follow me on twitter for more tips.

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