How to recover Ransomware encrypted files

Read time 5 minutes

“Ransomware” the word is hair-raising which leaves you in miserable and helpless condition by not letting you access your own computer system files. It infects, deletes, encrypts and limits access to your computer files and other storage devices until you pay the ransom amount. As we all know, Ransomware viruses such as lock screen, encryption, MBR, Android mobile device are around from a long time now. Amongst which some of them are decryptable making your data available without paying any ransom to grant access.

Symptoms of a Ransomware infection

• When you have denied accessing or opening a file.
• If you see a pop-up message on your screen asking for ransom.
• When you start any application and you see a countdown message.
• When you see instructions to open your files and a message asking for Bitcoins to unlock.
• If you face corruption, damaged or wrong file extension errors.
• If all the file names and directory locations change without your involvement.

How does Ransomware get into your system?

There are a number of ways through which Ransomware can be injected into your computer and storage devices. Here are some of them mentioned below:

1. Injection through Emails: Emails are the most common and easiest way to get into somebody’s system. It is usually injected with the help of an email attachment which is downloaded and opened by you or you install it without authentication resulting in Ransomware infection.
2. Injection through Download: It the quickest way through which Ransomware gets injected. If you download malicious codes, scripts, software exe, and plug-ins that are patched with malicious codes for exploiting the system files the moment you install them.

You can save yourself from such a dangerous situation with the help of some tested and tried methods that can help you to recover deleted files and restore all the encrypted data on your system.

How to recover Ransomware Encrypted Files?

There are many methods for recovering encrypted files by Ransomware virus attack. Follow the methods step by step carefully:

Method 1: Recover Ransomware encrypted or deleted files via system backup

This is a highly trusted and workable method if your backup was set and active before the Ransomware attack and you have not deleted any of the backup files. Windows backup is the most popular solution that is always opted for recovering from worse case scenarios and for that matter it is always recommended by IT experts to set up Automatic Windows Backup because Ransomware has some loopholes that can be broken which will not delete your backups.

Hence, you can look for the encrypted file in your backup copy and replace them on your computer.

Method 2: Recover Ransomware Encrypted or Deleted Files with Data Recovery Software

Just in case, if you have no backup available or you never considered setting up for a windows data backup, we highly recommend you use a professional Windows data recovery software. It is a complete package that recovers data from almost all types of storage media like an external hard disk, USB drives, SD cards and more.

Method 3: Recover Ransomware Encrypted or Deleted Files by Restoring the Previous Version of File:

Follow the mentioned process to get rid of encrypted files by Ransomware:

Step 1: Locate the file and right-click to select Properties.

Step 2: In the Properties windows, click the Previous Version tab.

Step 3: You will see a list of available snapshots for the file, amongst which you will have to select the latest known version of the file.

Step 4: To verify the version, click View and do any of the following once you find the correct file.

View: You can view the recovered file and click File >> Save As to save the file.

Copy: You can create a copy of the recovered file in the same directory where the original file is saved.

Restore: By doing this, you can restore the recovered file and replace the original or current file.

Final Words:

In the end, you can hit and try any of these methods to recover files encrypted by Ransomware virus. Also, Ransomware brings you at a stage where you might face disastrous scenarios like losing on business reputation, breaching privacy, etc. Therefore, act to the situation instantly the moment you realize data is attacked by Ransomware.