How to Remove Shortcut Virus: 9 Powerful & Easy Tricks!

Preventive Measure to Stop Shortcut Virus from Spreading Further in the First Place

I already told you about taking quick preventive measure as soon as you spot it, right?

So, what exactly do you need to do?

You shall first protect the infected drive from spreading furthermore.

To do that, follow these steps:

1. Stop autoplay of removable drives. This guide from Redmond Pie will help you to quickly disable autoplay of external drives.
2. And when you want to open and get the contents of your USB Drive, don’t double click and open it, that will execute the virus. Instead, Right Click on the drive, click Explore. This way, the shortcut virus won’t execute.

So, lets get into the 9 Powerful (Yet Easy) Tricks to Remove Shortcut Virus and rescue your data!

USB Fix – Shortcut Virus’ Quick Remedy

1

UsbFix s a free malware removal tool to will help you to detect and remove shortcut virus. It can scan infected removable devices, USB’s external HDD’s, smartphones, digital cameras, etc.

And here’s the kicker:

It’s sort of plug and play software i.e. Download -> Open -> Run and you’re done!

With over 5 Million downloads, it is one of the most trusted software to remove shortcut virus. Also, it is designed in a user-friendly UI which will help you get things done easily and faster. The size of the software too, is quite small (approx. 4 MB) which will run and help you get rid of the shortcut virus instantly.

This software is planned by El Desaparecido and developed by sosvirus.net.

Features:

1. Vaccinate:Permanent solution for the shortcut virus. This option will create a new autorun.inf file in your removable drive. An autorun file handles the auto-starting of the drive. So, the newly created file will have protective measures to prevent the shortcut virus.
2. Repair:It repairs the damaged files of your removable drives. This will help in the recovery of hidden files, registry entries, task manager, etc.
3. Back-Up:You can backup your files before running UsbFix to revert things back later if something goes wrong.

Steps to Remove Shortcut Virus using UsbFix:

1. Download USBFIX.
2. Connect your USB drive / External HDD drive which contains the shortcut virus.
3. Run UsbFix software.
4. Click on Deletion. On clicking it, the process to remove shortcut virus will start. It will then ask you to restart your PC.

Learn more about UsbFix here.

Download UsbFix

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Fix Folder and Trojorm Removal Tool to Quickly Heal Shortcut Virus

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Trojorm Removal Tool is a piece of code that automatically runs and fixes all the files and removes shortcut virus completely from the external drive. This code is written by Archie Mercader, so special thanks to him for it!

Along with it, using fixfolder vbs file works the best. Fix Folder is a simple Visual Basic program that consists of a single loop that finds all the shortcut folders, and replaces it with the original folder name removing the shortcut virus.

Trojorm Removal Tool does the work of recovering the files from the virus while fixfolder fixes the actual shortcut of the drive and turns it into a normal application.

Steps to removing shortcut virus using Trojorm Removal Tool and FixFolder Script together:

1. Copy the Trojorm Removal Tool inside the infected drive and run it. (Make sure you copy it by “exploring” the infected drive or the virus will spread out).
2. Copy the Fixfolder Script to the infected drive, right-click on it and open with Notepad (or your preferred text editor) and change the letter H with the infected drive’s letter. Save the file and run it.

Download Trojorm & Fix Folder

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Using WinRAR to Retrieve Your Original Files

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As I’ve stated earlier, shortcut virus gets executed when you open your infected removable drive and hides all your files under shortcuts.

But, WinRAR is an application which doesn’t allows execution of any malwares and hence, you’ll be able to retrieve all your files back from the WinRAR interface.

This means, the shortcuts will still be there in your removable drive, but you’ll be able to take all your files out of it and save it in a safe place.​

Steps to remove shortcut virus using WinRAR:

1. Open WinRAR application. (If you don’t have it installed, download it from here)
2. From inside WinRAR interface, move on to your infected drive. Inside it, you’ll find all your files safe and clearly visible.
3. Select them all, right click-> Add Files to Archive and choose a name like USB Drive Backup.rar (or anything you like). With this, you’ve created an archive of all the files inside the infected drive.
4. Open My Computer -> open your infected drive. You’ll find your created archive there. Right click on it -> Cut. Paste it somewhere safe in your hard disk drive.
5. Open My Computer, Right-click on your infected drive-> Format. Choose Quick Format option and Start. After the format is over, just extract the backed up .rar file back into the removable drive.

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Kill USB Shortcut Virus with VBScript File!

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Shortcut Virus gets dangerous when it starts multiplying on your PC creating shortcuts everywhere.

It can even go to limit of infecting the C: Drive of your PC and locking you out of it.

To prevent this before it happens, here’s the solution:

A VBScript File coded to scan all infected drives, find out the virus and delete it.

And all these things are done within 30 seconds.

Actually, a VBScript is a Visual Basic Script that commands the PC to do certain tasks according to the code in it. In this case, it is directed to remove shortcut virus completely from your system.

So, it’s not a software. It’s just a script. The code for removing shortcut virus is already precoded in a way to delete shortcut virus from your PC.

All you need to do is, download the script, run it. It’ll automatically start doing things on it’s own.

A dialog box will pop up, asking you to click OK and again disappear for some moments, appear again. The same procedure for about 4-5 times.

So, all you need to is, run the script and you’re all set!

Download VBScript File

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Removing Shortcut Virus using CMD

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Shortcut Viruses once entered in your PC, is then difficult to remove. It may inject into any of the files and create shortcuts.

It’s better not to completely rely on a single method to remove it. Can’t say, if it goes for temporary period and jumps in again!

So, here’s another way to do it: Removing Shortcut Virus using CMD.

CMD, acronym for Command Prompt, is a command-line interpreter for Windows. It’s a sort of compiler which processes your commands giving you an output (in this case, it is finding out and cleaning shortcut virus).​

Steps to remove shortcut virus using CMD:

1. Plug your USB drive in PC.
2. Open Start Menu-> Run. (Alternatively, Win + R key combination). In the run dialog box, type cmd.
3. Copy the below code and paste it into CMD:

​ATTRIB -H -R -S /S /D G:*.*

Note

You’ll need to change the G letter of the code to your Pen Drive’s letter. G was just an assumption (for the above example.)

The explanation of the above code:

Attrib specifies the attribute (as you might have guessed it)
-H is to unhide all the files on Flash Drive (which were hidden as shortcuts due to the virus)
-R is to create the files in your Pen Drive (recreate the shortcut files retrieving the original contents)
-S makes all the file on your USB drive not to be the part of system again (which makes it easy to do the process)
G is the Assumed USB Drive’s Letter (you’ll have to change it according to your Pen Drive / External HDD drive’s letter)

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A Coded .bat File to Permanently Remove Virus

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A bat file is an executable file which contains some pre-written script.

Just like the VBScript, it’s made to do certain tasks, and in our case, it’s removing the shortcut virus.​

Steps to remove shortcut virus using bat file:

1. Open a Notepad File.
2. Paste the code below in it, and save it as with a .bat extension (Save As -> All Files -> .bat extension)

@echo off
 attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d G:*.*
 @echo complete

Note

Replace letter G with the Drive letter of infected removable drive at every instance.

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Removing Shortcut Virus from Registry

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Shortcut virus once enters, spread quickly and multiplies!

So, this method is specifically to identify the virus in registry and if present, remove it.​

Steps to remove shortcut virus by tweaking registry:

1. Open Task Managerby pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
2. Click on the Processestab, find exe. If you find it, select it and then click End Process.
3. Open Run dialog box(Win + R key), type regedit. This will open the Registry Editor.
4. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Software / Microsoft / Windows / CurrentVersion / Run. Here, look for a registry key named odwcamszas, right click on it and Delete.

Note

This doesn’t always have to be the case. If you find the virus during the steps, then the shortcut virus has affected the registry and you must follow the steps above. If not found, skip this step.

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Config Tweaking to Remove Shortcut Virus!

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Tweaking configuration is an alternative in which, instead of using software, search for virus and remove it.

So, following the below steps, if you identify the virus, you can directly remove it.​

Steps to remove shortcut virus by tweaking config:

1. Open the Run box and type in %temp%. This will open the Temporary Files folder.
2. Search in that folder for vbs. If found, delete it.
3. Again, open the Run boxand type in msconfig. Go to Startup Tab, vbs from there. (In Windows 8, open Task Manager, go to Startup tab, and disable nkvasyoxww.vbs).

Note

Again, chances are there, that you might not find the given processes and entries. In such situations, skip this step and move onto next one.

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Shortcut Virus Remover – Amazing Tool to Get Rid of Shortcut Virus Quickly

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Shortcut Virus Remover is another powerful tool to remove the shortcut virus easily.

Using this software is quite easy. Follow the on-screen instructions and you’re done!​

Download Shortcut Virus Remover

Note

Other freewares like Free Shortcut Remover and Shortcut Virus Fixer are also worth trying.