At some occasions, when we use removable media such as pen drives, memory cards, and sometimes even the cameras and mobile phones, connected to computer, we can find that some files or folders in it has been removed or misplaced. But when we check the size of available data in the drive, we obviously see that the files must be there. Mostly this occurs when these removable media are affected by malicious virus programmes. Though we scan the drive with an anti-virus application programme and remove the viruses, we mostly are unable to get these files back in our drive. But what is the solution if those files hidden in the removable media are essential and only available in that exact drive only?
(If you do not wish to read all the information, you can just get the final product at the bottom)
What is a Computer virus?
Some of computer programmers produce some potentially unwanted applications by mistake, and “Hackers” do intentionally to invade into important networks to steal or destroy data, or to disturb or disrupt activities on these networks. These harmful programs are known as computer viruses in common. Usually they run automatically or linked with another application. These can harm to computer processes, activities, files, and file attributes.
Mainly this happens when a certain drive is affected by a common virus known as “Shortcut virus” which hides all the files in the drive affected by it, and makes shortcuts of those files together with a the main virus that it is associated with. We could find several viruses, including types of “Trojan horse, warm, hackAV, injectors, and crawlers” which were run by the association of this shortcut maker.
How I could find this situation, was that whenever I check a removable drive, even after removing the viruses, I couldn’t get the file in it. Even when the settings of computer were changed to make it show hidden files and folders, the result was negative. But when I try to browse the drive using the archive utility named as “WinRAR”, I could see the files, and they were not only hidden but also attributed as “Read only”, “Non-indexed” and “Protected System files” to making the users unable to edit or search for, but if found somehow, only possible to read the files.
Then, by seeking for more settings in the computer, it was possible to change the setting to see those files by unchecking the option “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” which is available at the “View” tab of “Folder Options dialog. Still the situation is similar to which of using “WinRAR” application.
Getting the support of Command Prompt
It is a common idea that the command prompt, which is the representative of DOS (Disk Operating System) the first known computer operating system, has solutions for most of the problems arising with computer usage. Therefore, an attempt of getting help of Command prompt was made to change the attributes of these hidden files to normal. By referring the Book “Batch file Programming, Premakumar S. 2009”, the command “attrib” was identified as a key to solve this problem.
The “attrib” command
The command “attrib” is used in windows command prompt to see, set or remove an attribute of a file or of a set of files (Premakumar .S, 2009). When the command is entered with help seeking operator “_/?”, i.e. “attrib /?” is entered to the prompt, the list of available attributes and the operators, switches and sub commands under the “attrib” command is displayed.
Then the required sub commands and operators could be identified. Then the total command is as “attrib –s –h –r –i /s /d *.*” to reset the files because the “-s” switch is to remove the “Protected Operating System file” attribute, “-h” switch removes “Hidden” attribute, “-r” switch removes “Read Only” attribute and “-i” switch removes “Non Indexed” attribute. The “/s” switch makes the command to work for all the files in the working folder and in all sub-folders, while “/d” switch makes the command to make the relevant changes to folders. The asterisk is used to identify all types and all names thus using “*.*” allows the command to work on all files.
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