Transfer Multiple Photos from Alcatel U5 to Windows 8 Laptop

For some reason, Windows 8 wasn't recognizing the Alcatel U5 Smartphone when it was being connected to any USB port even after swapping USB cables.

There's also the option of transferring files from the Alcated U5 to your Laptop via Bluetooth, but I haven't been able to do this for multiple files after the devices were paired. So, I kept looking for a multiple photo transfer solution.

Device Manager was showing the Alcatel U5 under Portable Devices with a yellow question mark. This means that the device was not properly recognized.

Tried updating the drivers automatically by searching online. It found an MTP driver, but was saying something about an INF error.

Looked for an alternative solution and found a video which was recommending that the MTP USB driver be installed manually from the C:\Windows\inf folder.

Changed the browse directory option and then chose the "Let me pick a list of drivers on my computer option".

Was looking for an MTP or MTP USB device option but initially, there were none. If you see a bunch of numbers with a USB icon, try that. I guess I got lucky. The next time I tried this option, it now gave me two options, MTP and MTP USB device. Choose MTP USB device.

If all goes well, you should now see the Alcated U5 as a portable media device along with your drives on Windows explorer. Right click on it and select import pictures and videos. There are settings which you can configure to streamline this process, but basically, what happens is the PC searches all the android phone folders and directories for all photos and videos and imports these to the computer. I initially found 1000+ pictures on the phone, and this might seem inefficient. But if you are using the same directory on your PC to store all photos, you can skip copying duplicates the next time you go through the process. Yes, searching through all the photos the second time or nth time around is inefficient, but it should only import the new ones.

Personally, I still prefer the old way of going through the DCIM folder and only selecting the photos that are new based on the date they were created. But this wasn't possible in my current situation, thus the workaround above. Hope it helps you out.

.lnk USB Virus

It seems like every year, this USB Virus mutates and becomes more and more difficult to remove. Here are some steps I found online to remove it.

1. Try to scan your USB drive first with your anti-virus software
2. If no threats are found, go to Start and type cmd on the search bar
3. When it appears, right click on it and choose the option Run as Administrator 
4. Navigate to Flash Drive by typing its assigned drive letter, then colon, and hit Enter (i.e. H:)
5. Type dir /w/a to check what files are present. This virus usually tries to hide all your original files in the USB and will only show two files - an autorun.inf.lnk file and another .lnk file
6. Type del *.lnk in the cmd window and hit Enter on your Keyboard.
7. Now type attrib -s -r -h *.* /s /d /l and hit Ente
8. Your now might see two folders, one named _ (underscore) and another called System Volume. One of the folders should contain all your original files. Just copy your original files to a different storage device and delete everything else you don't recognize. You can also just format your USB drive once you've retrieved the original files.