Command promp issue

[steveonmars]

Hello,
I have an HP laptop running Windows 7 and have 2 WD external hard drives hooked up for backups and extra space. I've been using the external drives off and on for years with no issues. A couple weeks ago all of my files on both drives turned into shortcuts. When I hover my pointer over the shortcut I get the following: “Location: cmd (C:\Windows\System32)”, without the quotes. If I click on a shortcut a new window opens to the file I want but a command prompt window opens first and then disappears when the new window opens.

At the same the shortcuts appeared there were also new shortcuts added that said RECYCLER or $RECYCLE.BIN which were empty. I ran scans using my McAfee antivirus, Emsisoft Anti-Malware and Ad-Aware and one of them found a Trojan named Recycler and I had it deleted. Everything seems to be working OK, and did even before I noticed the shortcuts, I didn't notic anything until I clicked on one of the drives and saw the shortcuts. Even after deleting the trojan I still have the shortcuts on my external drives. I can rename new folders to get around the shortcuts but that doesn’t solve the problem or tell me what happened. All I’ve been able to figure out is that it has something to do with the command prompt. If someone could help me figure this out and explain what happened and what I can do to be sure everything is clean It’d really help ease my mind.
If this is in the wrong forum please let me know so I can get it to the right one.
Thank you,
Steve

 

[HPrometheus]

Unfortunately it depends how much havoc the virus caused, but I would recommend a format and restore. If you're worried about losing your data, there's a chance it could be restored from a professional organization...but on your own without specialized materials is pretty hard.

Virus got you, restore your computer and good luck!

 

[steveonmars]

I have about 1.5 TB of data, backups, etc. on these external hard drives for my business and everything seems to be working OK now. I keep trying different programs to scan (I did malwarebytes today) and nothing more is showing up. I guess I'll let things run for a while and see if I have anymore problems. I'll just get rid of the shortcuts on the ext. drives and see if things stay OK for a while before I do anything drastic. I'm leary of doing a backup now until I know things are OK, I don't want to backup the trojan if it's still there somewhere. Thanks for the advise, hopefully I'll get lucky and won't need to go that far.
Steve