I cannot see files in my thumb drive after deleting the virus :(

After scanning and deleting the virus from my flash drive, I can no longer see all the files and folders that were in my flash drive, only few files were left. I tried going to tools and checked on "show hidden folders" and uncheck "hide extensions for known files types" but nothing happened Please help me on this. I really need my files badly since they all concern my school papers and presentations

Thank you.

 

do you need the files back, or do you just need the drive working again meaning empty.

 

I need the files back. Apparently, my flash drive still displays the the memory it occupies with all my files intact although some are invisible. I tried to locate them using run and search the folder name, they are all there: the files, etc. and they can be opened through "run". But when I open my flash drive in My Computer, I can't see the invisible folders

 

try something like the programs below , but their are many others.

http://www.freebyte.com/filediskutils/#datarecovery

http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

http://www.recuva.com/

 

enable "show hidden files"? maybe even enable "show hidden system files"? if they are there and openable and all, then just unhide them?

 

-Which of the three you recommend the best?

 

just unhide your folders.

but else, recuva should work good as a first try. it's small, simple, and free.


but i've seen virii that just hid all folders with user files in (or hid the user files), or renamed music to pictures and such (mp3 to jpg) to annoy users really much

so, unhide them..

 

-what do you mean "just unhide my folders"? Does that mean that I don't have to download recuva anymore? But I tried that already and still I cannot view my folders and files. Is it true that a virus let this happen?

If I recovered my files using recuva, will the virus in my flash drive spread in my hard disk as well? But I scanned my flash drive with AVAST! and there were no virus anymore ...

 

After scanning my flash drive using recuva, there were green and red circles indicated on my files to be recovered, what do those green and red spheres mean?

 

no if the virus got removed it should be away.

Show Hidden Files


then rightclick on the hidden folder(s).



and when pressing okay, say yes, to all files and subfolders.

 

green you can recover , red - not recover , recover the green and try another program to recover the red.

 

how big's the chance that the red, non-recoverable is the virus? just a thought..

 

I just did that and now I can see all my hidden files. But after right-clicking on them, the check box of "hidden" is unclickable. What should I do now?

 

change the file permission settings to full access for your user.. (and this time, i won't google up the images and tutorial for you..)

or just copy them all out to a new place (folder on the desktop f.e.?), delete all stuff on the stick, and move them back? that would possibly be more easy for you.


oh, and after all is done, think about setting up some backup solution. if that is within budget. no idea..

 

-What about yellow?

 

should be all in the helpfile, or as a tooltip when hovering the colours?


from recuva.com help (in quick start)

Select the check boxes beside the file or files you want to restore. The color of the dot next to the file name indicates your chances for a successful recovery (green for excellent, orange for acceptable, and red for unlikely):

so red is most likely your deleted virus, and the green ones are your still existent but just hidden files. orange ones are maybe ones you deleted a while ago?

 

Although this didn't work in all the invisible folders, these steps really did help a lot. What I did, I manually created new folders and transfered files and folders of the the hidden ones then deleted them afterwards. After the tedious work, I reformatted my flash drive just to make sure that there are no pending viruses. Presto, my usb is good as new with all the files still intact!
Thanks everyone! Really learned alot, especially, from verifying that the computers I plug-in my drivers MUST have a good and trusted anti-virus. (^^,)