What to do if you have missing folders on the flash drive because of virus

Flash media typically are very vulnerable to the attack of viruses. Have used someone else's computer – and disappeared all the files. But don't worry restore them is quite simple.

Why lost files on the drive?

Surely, every user at least once faced such problem when working for someone else's computer and saved all data on the drive, home was surprised to find that files it not – it is empty. Start to remember, when you have time to delete files or maybe did and forgot to save them on a flash drive? But the documents and files can be very important. How could this happen?

This usually happens when the computer is inhabited by viruses. Some viruses are able to change the attributes of folders and files with "hidden" or "system". Thus, they seem to delete files, but actually just make them invisible. To verify this, you need to check the amount of used memory on the device. To do this, go to "My computer" and see how much space is occupied on the drive. If the amount is greater than zero, it means that all files remained intact, they are just invisible to the user.

Restoring "deleted" files

There are several ways to make all files visible again. The simplest way to show hidden folders and files in Windows. To do this, open any folder and in the menu bar and choose "Tools" — "folder Options". Next, go to the View tab and select "Show hidden files and folders". If after that on a flash drive will be visible to all "deleted" files, then you need to highlight them and open their properties with the right mouse button. In the appeared window it is necessary to remove a Daw from attribute "hidden" and click "Apply". But as a rule, this method helps very rare.

Another way to make the files visible using the command line. To do this, go to "start", select "Run", typing "cmd" (without the quotes) and press Enter. In the resulting window, type "dirn: /x" (without the quotes). N is the drive letter assigned to the flash drive, which can be viewed via the shortcut "My computer".

This command will show a list of all the files on a flash drive. If there will be a folder called "E2E2~1", then you need to rename it to "ren E2E2~1. abc" instead of "abc" you can write any other folder name). Next, go to the flash drive and all data will be in a folder "abc".

You can also use different file managers. They are, as a rule, the default show hidden files and you have only to copy to another location.

That is, in principle, that's all. The most important thing is not to forget to delete virus on flash drive using anti-virus software, otherwise the problem will repeat again.