What is a Shortcut Virus and how to remove it?

Shortcut virus is also known as 1 KB shortcut virus|  It is a common Trojan virus that spreads widely using USB drives or pen drives as a medium. This  virus  deletes all folders on the root directory of the USB  and then  creates a shortcut with the same name as the folder  . These shortcut files .EXE, . VBS, . LNK, . INI exists with  extension. When the user clicks on these shortcuts, this virus is  activated and automatically runs in the background   .

Some useful measures without data loss are mentioned below:

Rule  1.  Remove the shortcut virus using the Command prompt.

The attrib command is a highly effective method for removing shortcut viruses from pen drives or USB flash drives.
Here are the detailed steps below.

Step 1.  Connect your infected external drive to your computer and then press windows key + E to check the letter of the external drive.

Step 2.  Open the run box by pressing Windows + R in your computer,, and after typing the CMD in it, press the CTRL + Shift + Enter key. If your computer asks for an an administrator account and password, enter  it too.

Step 3. After typing the checked drive letter in the Command prompt window, apply a colon (for example, E), then press the Enter key.

Step 4.  Then type del*.lnk or del autorun.inf and press the enter key.

Step 5.  Then  type attrib -h – r -s /s /d E:\*.* and press the enter key. (As an example, E-infected drive letter is there).

Note: If this remedy doesn’t work, you’re probably infected with another virus. To remove these suspected viruses, you autorun. Replace inf with a different virus extension, such as *.exe.

Rule 2. Remove shortcut viruses by creating a BAT file.

You can easily  remove shortcut viruses from  your removal media  by creating a BAT file and then running it. The steps for this are as follows:

Step 1.  Connect your USB, pen drive or SD card to your computer and create a new notepad file on the desktop.

Step 2.   Copy the code below into the new notepad and save it with the .bat file extension. 

@echo off

from *.lnk

attrib -s -r -h G:\*.* /s /d /l

@echo complete

Note: Replace the drive letter G  with the  infected drive letter.

Step 3.    Double-click the.bat file on your desktop, and wait for the process to finish.

This will also successfully remove shortcut viruses from your drive.

Rule 3.  Remove suspicious keys from  the registry editor to remove the shortcut virus.

The steps to remove shortcut viruses with this method are also follows:

Step 1.  Open the Run box by pressing the Windows + R keys and type regedit in it and press the enter key.

Step 2.  After the Rregistry editor window opens, go to the run path > currentversion > HKEY_CURRENT_USER > software > Microsoft > Windows.

Step 3: Delete suspicious keys such as odwcamszas, WXXKYz, ZGFYszaas, OUzzckky..

You can follow some of the tips below  to remove shortcut viruses from Windows 10 PCs

Step 1.  Enable the firewall on Windows PC.

             Open the Control Panel < click on the “Windows Defender Firewall” option < go to the “Turn Windows Defender Firewall on or off” option.

• Mark the “Turn on Windows Defender Firewall” box > press the “OK” button to confirm.

Step 2.  Turn on the Virus & Threat Protection service  in  windows defender security center.

• Right click on the Windows icon and then select the “Settings” option > select the “Update and Security” option.

•  Click on the “Open Windows Security” option in the Windows Security section.

• On the new page, click on the “Virus & Threat Protection” option > then go to Virus & Threat Protection Settings.

• Start these three options: real-time protection, cloud-delivered protection and automatic sample submission.

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