Read this article to find out how to restore from the quarantine the files and apps removed by an antivirus. We will discover how to do it with third-party data recovery apps and how to use the integrated backup function to restore deleted files.
Introduction
Most user data placed onto a storage device is important, and often confidential, which tempts all sorts of hackers to steal it secretly, or use it for some malicious purpose or illegal activities. To get their hands on the data, law-breakers use various tools one of which is malware capable of infecting user devices, directly or indirectly, and stealing important data.
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To avoid infection and possible negative consequences of having malware on a computing device, different antivirus solutions are developed to create a safe environment and protect both the device and the user data. In real-time mode, antivirus programs monitor the situation and search for malicious elements, respond to virus attacks, block infiltration attempts, and move infected or suspicious objects to a protected storage for isolation and examination; if these cannot be cured, they are removed.
Yet antiviruses often remove objects which seem suspicious but are not infected, which may result in loss of user data and cause serious trouble, especially if this data was not copied elsewhere and existed in a single location. Still, the situation is not so hopeless at all, and the data can be restored. In today’s article, we will explain how to recover data from the quarantine of an antivirus and what methods can be used when such data was completely removed by an antivirus app.
Why it is important to use an antivirus
With the present-day world tendency of keeping most data in a digital format, its safety and protection against unauthorized access becomes an issue of primary importance. Any information regardless of its type and field of application may become subject to malicious activities that result in its being stolen or lost for good. Family archives and personal notes, private information, confidential financial and banking data, professional and commercial materials, registers and databases – all of them are the stuff hackers are very interested in.
Depending on the kind of malware that was involved, the consequences may vary greatly. Viruses may get the information damaged partially, stolen or lost permanently, by removing, overwriting, blocking or encrypting it.
Damage to the system integrity and the files required to ensure normal operation of a computing device and processing of data may cause errors, modify file allocation tables which are in charge of storing data, lead to failures or even crash the operating system, to say nothing of hardware issues.
Malware can copy itself elsewhere instantly, overloading the operating system and multiplying the amount of junk files, unlock access to user data, infect other devices connected to the computer, send viruses from your PC, use it for launching hacking attacks against other users, sending malicious code or hack servers with restricted access.
Using antivirus solutions will help you ensure data integrity, the highest possible level of protection for the processes involving transfer, exchange, storing and processing information, enable you to avoid damage to hardware and software of your PC, and will contribute to protecting you from other negative consequences of malware activities.
Neglecting the antivirus protection increases considerably your chance to suffer from a virus attack or infestation, and eliminating its negative consequences may require substantial efforts and financial expenses.
Restoring files deleted by the AVG antivirus
Modern antivirus programs strive to ensure complete protection for computing devices and user data against unauthorized access, damage, removal or other malicious activities that may have irreversible effects. Often, an antivirus tries to predict the extent of dangerous influence a certain process, action, file or app may have, and therefore blocks or isolates suspicious elements based on the results of its own independent analysis. This way, infected or potentially harmful objects are moved to a special protected storage (quarantine) of this antivirus, or get erased if the size of the suspicious file exceeds certain limits.
However, an antivirus may not always be correct in its estimate of the danger presented by a specific object, so due to its internal settings and in order to exclude all risks of virus infestation, the antivirus may remove an absolutely healthy file – which behaved in a way that the antivirus found to be suspicious. If such file contained important data or was an element of the system control function, removing it may generate errors or result in an irreversible loss of data. Quite seldom, you can find this removed file in the Windows Recycle Bin and restore it in an ordinary way with the integrated system tools. But if you can’t find the removed files in the standard Windows storage location (the Recycle Bin), you can use other well-tested methods you are going to read about in this article.
Show hidden files
One of the possible methods to restore the lost data when it is no longer shown in its original location is to enable showing hidden files. Sometimes, an antivirus may just hide suspicious files instead of removing them. There are a few ways to make them visible. Here’s the easiest one involving Windows Explorer. It lets you make the hidden files visible and see them immediately.
Open the Windows Explorer in any way you prefer, for example, by double-clicking on This PC desktop shortcut, or by using the context menu appearing when you right-click of that shortcut and choosing Open, and then browse to the required folder.
In the Explorer’s window, switch to the tab View, and in the main ribbon click on Show/Hide. In the menu that appears, check the box for Hidden items. The changes will apply immediately and all hidden files will become visible.
Find the files you need; if you don’t see them, try another method.
Restore from the quarantine the files and apps removed by the antivirus
Most modern antiviruses have a special protected storage (quarantine) which is used for keeping files infected with viruses or those the antivirus believes are potentially dangerous. It is a specially allocated area in the storage device (mostly in the system drive С:/) which is absolutely safe as the antivirus settings prevent the dangerous object from direct contact with the operating system and block any of their activities. Files and applications moved to the quarantine of an antivirus program are not deleted permanently. The main idea of the quarantine is safekeeping the files which have been deleted by the AVG antivirus for some time so that the user can think and decide whether they need the isolated files. If they find out that the missing files are required for normal operation of the computer, were removed by mistake of contain the necessary information which cannot be obtained elsewhere, they can always restore such files to their original location.
For illustration, we’ll be using a free antivirus program AVG AntiVirus FREE, But the sequence of steps works with all versions of AVG. antiviral solutions.
Open the AVG in any way you prefer, for example, by double-clicking on the desktop shortcut AVG AntiVirus FREE, or right-click on it and select Open from the menu.
In the upper right corner of the antivirus window click on the Menu button to open the control panel.
From the options, select Quarantine.
The quarantine page will show you all files and apps placed into the storage as they seem to contain hidden threats for the operating system, or those labeled as potentially dangerous. Find the file or group of files you need to restore by checking the corresponding boxes. Otherwise, check the box for Select all viruses if you want all elements selected.
Depending on the actions you’re going to take, the antivirus offers five variants:
Delete – remove selected objects from the protected storage immediately;
Send for analysis – submit selected objects for analysis by AVG specialists;
Restore – move selected objects to their original location where they used to be stored before the quarantine;
Restore and add exception – selected objects will be restored and added to the exceptions list to prevent their removal in the future;
Restore as – save selected objects to a new location according to user’s directions.
To restore selected files, open the context menu of the Delete button, located in the lower right corner of the antivirus window, and choose one of the three tabs for restoring elements according to user preferences.
If you can’t find the files in the quarantine of your antivirus, and displaying hidden files couldn’t help you either, you need to use specialized data recovery software, and you can find the detailed algorithm to use in the next part of the article.
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