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Could be caused by a virus that may have infected your system. Is your antivirus/antispyware all up to date?<br />
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In Windows Explorer when viewing the files, Click the View Menu and select &quot;details&quot;. &nbsp;Are the file &quot;types&quot; named &quot;shortcut&quot;? &nbsp;Are the file sizes correct or are they the size of a shortcut (1kb)?<br />

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It's possibly caused by a malware. I've seen such a case many times!<br />
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If the malware is active on your PC you can't do anything to see your files, because it'll undo what you do!<br />
If you don't have any malware and they're just effects of a previous inffection try this:<br />
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Open your flash drive window, then :<br />
Start menu &gt;&nbsp;Run &gt;&nbsp;Type cmd and press enter &gt;&nbsp;Type the command below<br />
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<b>Attrib -s -r -h X:\*.*</b><br />
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(I assumed that your Flash drive letter is X. Change it to your flash drive letter (e.g. I))<br />
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Then press enter and wait for the command to finish and it goes to the next line.<br />
Check your flash drive window for the files. If you see no files, then one of the 2 cases are possible:<br />
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1) The malware is still running on your system.<br />
2) There is no file other than that shortcuts on that flash drive. (The real files got removed somehow)
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Below is a link to a discussion of a similar problem. It is difficult to tell which malware affected you. Malwarebytes and Microsoft Security Essentials usually detected and remove such malware.<br />
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<a href="http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/files-on-external-drive-have-changed-to-shortcuts/695db4cc-645f-4bd1-85c7-41671457fe11" rel="ugc nofollow">http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/files-on-external-drive-have-changed-to-shortcuts/695db4cc-645f-4bd1-85c7-41671457fe11</a>
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all my folders and EXE files on flash drives show up as short cuts only video files &nbsp;show up normal
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all my folders and EXE files on flash drives show up as short cuts only video files  show up normal

all folders and exe files showing up as shortcuts

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