Recently, viruses have become more frequent on the network, the main task of which is to infect the autorun file of removable media. As a result of this malicious effect, a user opening a infected drive will only see shortcuts in the place of folders and files. It’s not worth worrying much, because there is a way to solve this problem, and it is very simple. However, for such cases it is extremely important to know how to open hidden files on a USB flash drive, since double-clicking the shortcut with the left mouse button will open the desired content, but at the same time it will allow the virus to penetrate the user's computer, often safely bypassing the scanners of the antivirus program.
The principle of the virus
Before you open hidden files on a USB flash drive, you must correctly understand the algorithm of action of this virus. In fact, this is not even some kind of separate malicious program, but their whole family, using the same principle for its functioning. This class of malware is called “Trojan”. After one of them affects a very vulnerable autorun file, all folders and files on removable media become invisible, since they are assigned the “hidden” attribute. Instead, labels with corresponding names appear. Seeing this picture on their flash drive, many users panic and immediately try to open folders and documents, which, as mentioned above, leads to very dire consequences.
How to open hidden files on a flash drive
The easiest way to access invisible files is to enable the mode of displaying hidden folders in the system. To activate this option, you need to go to the "Start" menu, where you should open the "Control Panel". Among the items presented there, you need to find "Folder Options." After you log into it, go to the “View” tab and drop to the very bottom, where it is easy to find the interesting option “Show hidden ...” After that, you can safely take up viewing hidden files on removable media, and the labels should be removed so that you don’t accidentally launch the hidden virus.
Additional Information
The method described above for some reason does not always work, so you can use third-party programs to save the situation if files on the flash drive are missing. You can, for example, use the capabilities of the shareware Total Commander or any other similar product, which is extremely easy to find on the modern Internet.
Preventive action
Knowing how to open hidden files on a USB flash drive, of course, will not be superfluous and will allow the user to take another step forward in mastering the PC, but it is better not to allow the occurrence of such situations, especially since it is very simple to do. To do this, you just need to disable USB autorun , which eliminates the possibility of infection of the file "autorun.inf".
Summary
Despite the fact that the consequences of these malicious programs are very easy to handle, you should be extremely careful, since infection of removable media can lead to the loss of user data.