Unhide your folders and files hidden by the virus.
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Now you see your files, now you don’t?
You installed or updated your antivirus, and your files just disappeared. Oh my goodness!
You are now in a panic. It seems that you lost all your precious data, your report (with deadlines), presentations, list of clients and more. You blamed your antivirus and yourself. What can you do?
First, don’t blame yourself, it is the right thing you should do. Having an antivirus and keep it updated is wise. It just happen you installed or updated it after the virus is already infecting your files.
Second, don’t blame your antivirus, it isn’t the reason, why your files are gone. It is the virus that hides it, and replaced it (to make it unnoticed the virus resembles your files). However, your antivirus is smart enough, detects the virus and deleted it.
How to recover your files?
Recommended reading:
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Now that is your problem, but I will help you find a solution.
Step 1
- Go to my documents, organize, folder and search options and click the view tab.
- Under the Hidden files and folders, select the show hidden files, folders and drives.
- Uncheck the “hide extensions for known files” and “hide protected operating system files”.
Now you can see your hidden files in semi transparent and as you can see the extensions of your files are now visible .docx, .pptx, .txt and so on.
- Right click your hidden folder (it’s semi transparent) click properties.
- Under the general tab, uncheck the hidden. In some cases this solves the hidden files problem but most of the time this doesn’t help. If you solved your problem, good for you, if not don’t worry let’s proceed to the next step.
Step 2
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Just copy the code below (start from the bottom to completely copy the code) and paste it in notepad, save it as folder.vbs (change the .txt extension into .vbs) . Then paste it inside your HDD, SD card or USB drive from where your files were hidden and run it.
Don’t forget to change the “d:” in cDrive with your current drive letter.
‘ Change d: to the drive letter where you want the change will happen.
cDrive = “d:”Set FSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
ShowSubfolders FSO.GetFolder(cDrive)
WScript.Echo “Done with fix.”Sub ShowSubFolders(Folder)
str = “”
For Each Subfolder in Folder.SubFolders
str = str & ” ” & Subfolder.Path
subFolder.Attributes = 0
ShowSubFolders Subfolder
Next
End Sub
You should see all your folders now. How about my image of precious moments, word documents and other files? Please take note that the above code is created to unhide folders alone the files outside your folders isn’t included. To unhide your files outside your folders let’s jump to the next step.
Step 3
- Click start, run, type cmd.
- Type your drive letter with colon Ex. e:, press enter.
- Then type
(without quotes)
Congratulations, you just retrieve your files and folders. If you have any better idea on how to unhide files and folders hidden by virus. Please share it with is, by commenting below. It will be highly appreciated.
Hesham says
October 22, 2015 at 2:23 pm
Very helpful info….thanks
I.C Tiempo says
Hi Hesham, it’s good to hear that you find this post helpful in unhiding files hidden by virus. You are most welcome.
Primus says
OMG thanks for this solution. I thought I’m gonna lose all my documents. thank you very much.
I.C Tiempo says
Hell Primus, am glad to learn that I was able to help. Thank you also for your appreciation and kind words.
Josip says
Hello there, my mom uses and old laptop with windowsxp on it and the script compilator keeps returning syntax erors for the ‘ ” or other signs, i removed the comments but even so it stops compiling in the first line of text when it reaches the “F:” part, any idea how to change it to work?
I.C Tiempo says
Hello Josip, I just updated the code, you can try to copy it now. Tell me if it works, again don’t forget to change the drive letter. By the way, upon pasting the code into notepad please delete the “read more etc…” at the bottom before saving.
Giuseppe says
Hello,
How or what made the decision to change the extension into .vbs, you have time to explain why these three letters and to pertaining from source?
The First step never cured and the Tabs from my Windows are set different from your windows.
I am going to try the Code, how was this developed into process steps in writing if you have time explaining?
I.C Tiempo says
Hi Giuseppe, the following are command script, if we use the.txt it won’t run. This script is developed just to unhide folders and sub-folders that’s been hidden by viruses (it will only work on windows environment).
steve says
Hey thank you! I needed only to uncheck…..-
best wishes
Robert says
Thank you, you made my day. Now I can see all my files.
I.C. Tiempo says
Hello Robert, am glad that you are able to unhide files and folders hidden by virus with this guide.