Updated on March 17, 2020
When your USB drive is affected by shortcut virus, all it's files and folders will become shortcuts, which you cannot access or open. The only solution to get rid of this issue is first remove shortcut virus from your USB drive without losing data files, and then use Yodot Hard Drive Recovery, a reliable data recovery software to recover files affected with shortcut virus.
Viruses are the most dreadful programs that alter data on storage devices making it corrupt and inaccessible. Shortcut virus like Trojan horse generic32.tnu will either cause inaccessibility of files or makes them hidden from Windows Explorer. As pen drive is the most convenient way of transferring data from one system to another, it is very prone to virus infection.
How does a USB pen drive get infected by viruses?
USB flash drive usually gets affected by malicious malware when it is connected to virus infected system to transfer files to/from pen drive. Even if the system is free from malicious spyware; USB drive connected to it can get virus infected when user browse and open suspicious sites in internet. USB flash drive when affected by harmful viruses will not get initialized on system. Other times, pen drive will get detected normally but will show no data present in it as files will be hidden. In rest of the cases, files will be marked as shortcut and such files cannot be opened / accessed at any cost. However, data will be safe in these scenarios.
How to resolve shortcut virus infected USB drive?
The best employed method to recover data from shortcut virus affected USB drive is given here. After connecting your USB drive, Open Run command prompt and type this command, attrib –h –r –s g:\*.* /s /d along with the spaces. Letter ‘g’ specifies the drive letter of USB flash drive connected on system. By pressing enter, you will see files in accessible state on USB drive. Copy-paste the files to any other location on system drive. If this doesn’t work, then the last option left is to use third party data recovery tool which will help to understand how to scan and fix flash drive and to safeguard data.
Software to Recover Data from USB Drive Infected with Shortcut Virus - Yodot Recovery:
Yodot Hard Drive Recovery tool is the excellent option to retrieve inaccessible and lost data from malware infected USB flash drive. This tool brilliantly recovers each and every file from pen drive / thumb drive that is not getting recognized or not working on any Windows computer. It can restore files like Word documents, text, Notepad, Excel files, PowerPoint files, applications, PDFs, folders, archives, photos, videos, music files, etc. without any difficulty. This program can retrieve data from inaccessible USB drive which is virus infected, not recognized / detected, failed, not working, crashed or turned unreadable for number of causes. This file retrieval tool can be used for recovering files lost or deleted from USB flash drives manufactured by HP, SanDisk, Transcend, iBall, Emtec, Lexar, Toshiba, Adata, Corsair, Kingston and many other brands. Moreover, it serves to be the best file recovery program to regain deleted and lost files from system hard disk, portable hard drive, SSD, FireWire drive, etc. formatted with FAT32, FAT16, NTFS, NTFS5, ExFAT and ReFS file systems. This tool can be utilized on Windows PCs and laptops running with Windows 10, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 and 2003 operating systems.
Steps to recover files from USB drive infected with shortcut virus:
- Connect your USB drive to a healthy Windows computer
- Download Yodot Hard Drive Recovery on this system and install it
- Run the utility from desktop icon or from Start menu and start the recovery process
- In the main screen, click on Partition Recovery option to restore shortcut files
- Then, select the drive that represents externally connected virus affected USB drive from which files are to be restored
- Also, if necessary choose the file types to restore from USB drive or else click on Mark All button
- By clicking next, allow the software to scan your USB drive to retrieve missing and inaccessible files
- Go through the list of files rescued in Data View or File Type view and preview required files
- At last save all your recovered files to desired destination location on system drive but not to the same USB drive from which you recovered data
Things to Remember:
- Before connecting flash drive to a system install good antivirus tool on it to treat shortcut viruses
- Avoid using pen drive on system while browsing internet or downloading any files
