Shortcut virus is very harmful to your storages. It’s a kind of virus, which will turn each and every file into a shortcut. That means you won’t be able to find the real file when your storage will be infected.
The internal storage of your computer, flash drives, anything could be infected. This virus spreads through third-party files, malicious software, or when you connect your storage with an infected device.
Your antivirus may not be able to detect them because they are very smart.
Let’s remove the shortcut virus permanently!
How to Remove Shortcut Virus From Pendrive / USB Drive using CMD
You can format your flash drive/ Pendrive, obviously if there is no important files. If there are important files, don’t worry! You can remove them using the command prompt of your computer.
- Click on Windows icon and search for cmd. Right click on it and run as administrator.
- When you enter an external usb drive, you will see a letter beside the name of your drive. It could be I,G,H or anything. In my case, its I.
- Now type I: in command prompt and hit enter.
- Then Type del *.lnk in cmd window and Hit Enter.
- Now type attrib i:*.* /d /s -h -r -s and press enter. Don’t forget to change I with your drive letter.
This process will remove the shortcut virus from your pen drive.
Remove shortcut virus from USB drive using UsbFix
You can also remove shortcut viruses from your USB drives using software called UsbFix. It is a third-party app that will do the work for you.
- Download UsbFix.
- Close all programs or else this app will close all running programme. Thjis may cause data loosing to you. So, close everything.
- Now, connect your infected usb storage to your computer.
- Click on clean on UsbFix.
- Wait a few minutes. It will remove shortcut virus.
Permanently remove shortcut virus from your computer
If your computer has the shortcut virus and when you transfer files to any USB drive and files become a shortcut, that means your computer is infected. You can easily remove shortcut viruses from your computer.
- Open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc and go to the processes tab.
- Look for the process Wscript.exe or any other such process and right-click then select ‘End Task.’
- Press Windows Key + R then type “regedit” and hit Enter. It will open Registry Editor.
- Now Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run - Look for the registry key “odwcamszas” and right-click then select and delete it.
- It’s possible that you won’t find the exact same key but look for junk values which don’t do anything.
This process will remove shortcut virus from your pc.
Don’t forget to remove all temporary files.