Uncontrolled Shortcut creation issues

Greetings.
So, I’m running into a real headache here. Every time I try to move a basic file—I mean anything from a simple .txt or PDF to an MP3 or a design file—from my desktop onto a USB drive or a microSD card, things go sideways.
The file transfers over just fine, but then, after a few seconds, it somehow transforms itself into a shortcut right before my eyes.
Now, if I click it on my computer, the file actually opens perfectly fine. That isn't the issue. The real problem is when I plug that USB into my car stereo to listen to music, or even into my phone; they can't read shortcuts. They just see nothing.

To make matters worse, I noticed something truly bizarre. If I try to delete these pesky shortcuts, they vanish for a moment, but then—poof!—they reappear a few seconds later as if they were never gone. WTF!!??

I’ve already tried being thorough and ran scans with several different antivirus programs and other cleanup tools to catch any malware or junk.
Everything comes back clean.

Why on earth is this happening?
And more importantly, how do I fix it?
Please, I am begging for some guidance here because I feel completely helpless against this digital gremlin.
Thank you so much!
😢

Have you tried using cut/copy and paste instead of just dragging and dropping?

Yeah, I gave that a shot too.
No dice.
I even tried a system restore.
Not a single thing is working.

It’s bizarre. For instance, if I move files over to my secondary internal drive (the G🙂 drive), everything stays perfectly fine. But the second I try to move anything to an external drive, it starts copying, and then—within thirty seconds—it just turns everything into a shortcut.
The absolute worst part? I have a massive music collection on my MP3 player. When I plugged it into my PC to add just one more song, the computer wiped everything out and turned every single track into a shortcut instead.
Now, the player won't even recognize any of the old songs anymore. It's completely bricked.

Honestly, I am at my wit's end here. I have no clue what else to try.

dustydrifter14 said:Yeah, I gave that a shot too.
No dice.
I even tried a system restore.
Not a single thing is working.

It’s bizarre. For instance, if I move files over to my secondary internal drive (the G🙂 drive), everything stays perfectly fine. But the second I try to move anything to an external drive, it starts copying, and then—within thirty seconds—it just turns everything into a shortcut.
The absolute worst part? I have a massive music collection on my MP3 player. When I plugged it into my PC to add just one more song, the computer wiped everything out and turned every single track into a shortcut instead.
Now, the player won't even recognize any of the old songs anymore. It's completely bricked.

Honestly, I am at my wit's end here. I have no clue what else to try.

It looks like you have a virus living on your computer, which means your USB sticks are likely infected as well.

Malwarebytes AdwCleaner

Go ahead and download this tool and save it right onto your desktop.
-Run the program, and once it finishes its scan, you should end up with two specific log files titled FRST.txt and addtional.txt.

Once you have them, just upload those logs to Pastebin, hit submit, and then paste the link here so I can take a look at what we're dealing with.