How To Prevent Computers Being Infected by Shortcut Virus

Today Most of the People depend upon Removable drives through which we share Music, Videos , Presentations etc. But when we use it in a Public Computers or Our Friends , they are Prone to being infected by Viruses. Although some of the doesn;t harm our files , Over period of time it slows down your PC. 

Such kind of virus include the Shortcut virus, which creates shortcuts in pendrive replacing folders on Removable drives. If it wasn't Removed, It removes the Options in Control Panel.

Steps to Prevent Shortcut Virus:

• First of Turn off Autoplay in your PC/Laptop. Open Windows Explorer / Control Panel.

Go to this location : Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\AutoPlay

Uncheck Use Autplay for all Media and Devices or change Take no Action to the follwing Items in it (refer Image).

1. Pictures
2. Software and games
3. Video Files
4. Audio files
5. Mixed Content

• Install a Good Antivirus like Kaspersky which is effective in cleaning Shortcut viruses. Also Microsoft Security Essentials prevents such type of viruses. But Avast does not show any mark in Detecting such type of viruses.

• If you came to know that the Removable drive is infected with the above mentioned viruses, don't hesitate to Format the drive. If you have valuable files, then open My Computer and Right click on your Removable drive and Click on Open as Portable device. This prevents the viruses to certain Extent.

• Don't ever Try to open the Autorun file in the Removable drive which creates javascript file (like f3e9f , b5e9f) in the C disk and add it to the Windows Startup list which creates a severe issue like slowing down Windows startup, Slow Processing Speed etc.

• If you don't know whether It have been added to startup list Run msconfig.exe and go through for files named with e9feh, b5e9f etc. in the Services and Startup tab , Uncheck it and click Apply and then Ok.

• Although you have done the above steps a good antivirus can prevent the Shortcut virus. Kaspersky is one of the Best in it upto my knowledge.

If you have other Ideas or Steps leave a comment or mail me to tricksbin@gmail.com