These are the folders that are not displayed in the Windows 7 interface. This is because the Hidden attribute is set for such folders. Usually hidden folders are folders with system files. For example, folders such as System Volume Information, $Recycle.Bin, etc. are hidden. But, if necessary, the user can make other folders hidden. In this article, we will talk about how to open such a hidden folder in Windows 7.
Option number 1. Open a hidden folder using the address bar.
If you know the name of the hidden folder, as well as the location where it is located, then you can open it manually. To do this, first open the folder in which your hidden folder is located, and then enter its name in the address bar. After entering the folder name and pressing the Enter button, the contents of your hidden folder will open in front of you.
Thus, you can quickly and easily open hidden folders. In this case, you do not need to enable the display of hidden folders or remove the "Hidden" attribute from the folder.
Option number 2. Turn on the display of hidden folders.
The second option for opening hidden folders is to change the settings so that hidden folders begin to be displayed in the Windows 7 interface. To do this, open any window and click on the "Organize" button, then select "Folder and Search Options".
After that, a window called "Folder Options" will appear in front of you. Here you need to go to the "View" tab.
On the "View" tab, you need to scroll down the list of options to the very bottom and enable the "Show hidden files, folders and drives" option.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to protect personal files or folders. This is especially true if more than one person works with the computer. One solution is hiding. Of course, it will not help in the case of an advanced user. But it will hide information from unsuspecting eyes.
How to hide/show files and folders on a Windows 7 computer
Standard way
To hide a file or folder, you need to go through two steps in sequence:
Turning off the visibility of hidden folders
If the “Do not show…” option is set in the settings, then hidden files and folders will still be displayed, with the only difference that, compared to a regular element, the label of such objects is dimmer.
Changing Folder/File Options
After these steps, the folder or files will become hidden and will not be displayed.
Enabling visibility and viewing
To show hidden items, you need to go to the folder settings and check the box next to "Show hidden files, folders and drives." And in order for a specific object to stop being invisible, you need to uncheck the “Hidden” option.
How to make a folder invisible - video
Via Total Commander
This method is related to the previous one in that in "Folder Options" there should also be a checkmark in front of the item "Do not show hidden files, folders and drives."
How to view files and make them open
To show hidden files and folders, press Ctrl + H.
To make the documents visible again, you need to use the combination Alt + A and uncheck the "Hidden" item.
Via Free Hide Folder
If you want to be sure that no one can see the hidden information, then you can use the Free Hide Folder program, which requires you to set a password.
Free Hide Folder does not hide individual files. Available for free download on the Internet.
- When you first start the program, a window will appear in which you need to enter and confirm the password. By the way, it will also be required when uninstalling the program.
- The next window will ask you to enter the registration code, but this is not a prerequisite. To continue working, you need to select Skip.
- Then click on the Add icon and select the folder you want to hide.
- After the folder is selected, a message will appear stating that it is desirable to make a Backup. It is advisable to follow the advice.
Backup saves information about the program. If the latter is deleted, then after reinstallation, access to hidden folders will be restored.
In addition to Add, the general window has buttons for:
How to find hidden information and transfer it to a USB flash drive
Free Hide Folder hides folders so that they cannot be found using search. The only way is to open the program and select the Unhide tool. A special feature is that it does not hide documents that are on removable drives.
Since Windows search cannot detect documents hidden by Free Hide Folder, copying cannot be used either. Thus, invisible folders cannot be transferred to removable drives.
With Image and Archiver
For this method, you will need a folder with files, any image and the WinRAR archiver. The program is available for free download on the official website. In this case, the bitness of the processor must be taken into account. To find out, you need:
You can take any image, there are no restrictions.
- Add the desired folder to the archive.
- Place the archive and the image in the same folder, preferably located in the root of the disk.
- Using the Win + R combination, launch the Run tool, enter cmd in the line and click OK.
- In the command line, navigate to the folder where the archive and image are located. To do this, enter the cd command and the address. In this case it is cd c:\.
- Then press Enter.
- Now in the line you need to write the names of the image, archive and new file. Also, all three positions must contain extensions. In this case, it turns out: COPY / B Image.jpg + FolderWithFiles.rar ImageWithArchive.jpg.
- Press Enter. If everything was written correctly, a message will appear on the command line that the files have been copied.
If you now open the created file, only the image that was taken as the basis will open.
The original files can be deleted.
How to view hidden files
To be able to view the files hidden in the image, you need to open the illustration itself using WinRAR.
But the archiver must first be added to the list of programs that can open images:
- In the "Open with" menu, click on the "Choose a program" item.
- Click on "Browse" and in the window that opens, find the folder with the archiver.
- Open the folder and select the shortcut to launch the program.
- Next, WinRAR will appear in the list of programs that can open the image. You also need to uncheck the box "Use the selected program for all files of this type." Otherwise, all images will be opened using the archiver.
When the user opens the image with the archiver, it will be seen that there is a folder inside.
But don't hide too much information in one file. If it takes tens of megabytes, even an inexperienced user will have suspicions.
Possible mistakes
How to enable the "Show hidden files and folders" option
Sometimes a situation occurs that the user activates the "Show hidden files and folders" option, but the switch automatically switches to the "Do not show hidden files and folders" position. In this case, you need:
Otherwise, the parameter must be created. To do this, right-click on an empty area of the window, select New, then DWORD Value. Name it CheckedValue and give it a value of 1.
- Go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.
- Find the Hidden parameter (with value 0), REG_SZ type, in the list and delete it.
- If the list contains the Hidden parameter, REG_DWORD type, then change its value to 1. Otherwise, the parameter must be created.
- Find the SuperHidden parameter in the list, REG_DWORD type, and change its value to 1.
- Press "F5" to refresh the editor window and close it.
What to do if "Folder Options" is missing
This usually indicates that viruses have entered the system. Perhaps the antivirus simply failed to identify and remove malware. And so that the user cannot visually detect them, the authors of such applications use the "Hidden" or "System" attributes. In addition, the menu item "Folder Options" is removed.
Even if the malware is removed, the antivirus will not be able to restore this item. This will need to be done manually:
It is possible that the Registry Editor was not blocked after a virus attack. In this case, you can use it:
- Using Win + R, launch the Run tool, enter regedit in the line and click OK.
- Go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.
In the right part of the window, find the NoFolderOptions parameter, REG_DWORD type. Double-click to open it and set the value to 0.
Hiding files and folders is an easy and fast way to protect your personal information. Of course, the first two are less reliable, and sophisticated users may accidentally or intentionally discover the secret. But FHF and the archiver will hide personal data even from experienced eyes.
In Windows, there are so-called hidden files and folders. They can be hidden both on the hard drive and on the flash drive. Sometimes these files need to be opened to the user to perform any operations, but how can this be done?
First, let's figure out why the system hides them. She hides them from prying eyes to protect herself from the user himself, so that he does not inadvertently delete them. So to speak, a kind of protection "from fools."
Hidden files- mainly system files, the removal of which may lead to a malfunction of the OS.
Some users themselves hide certain files and folders from other users on purpose.
Hidden files are by default not displayed at all. If you turn them on, hidden folders will appear translucent, unlike normal, opaque folders.
Turn on the display of hidden folders in Windows 7
In Windows 7, enabling the display of hidden folders is quite simple: go to "My Computer" and press the "ALT" key. A window with a menu will pop up at the top, select the “Tools” item there and look for the “Folder Options” item there. There we go to the "View" section and drag the list to the bottom. At the very bottom of the list, you will see items that enable and disable the display of hidden files and folders.
That's all. No more tricks are needed. You can also view hidden files and folders using Total Commander, WinRar. The main thing to remember is that changing or deleting hidden files can lead to unstable system operation, so be careful.
Today I will tell you how to hide a folder in Windows 7. There are several ways to hide a folder to accomplish this task, and all of them are simple. After reading this article, you will know at least 2 ways to do this.
Hiding a folder using standard Windows 7 tools
If you are not familiar with any method to hide a folder, then I advise you this particular method, because it differs from others in its simplicity and speed, as well as the absence of the need to install any additional programs.
First you need to set the "Hidden" property for the folder itself that you want to make invisible to others. Right-click on the folder icon and click on Properties. A window will open in which, in the "General" tab, at the bottom, check the box next to the "Hidden" inscription, as in the picture below.
When you click "OK", you will see that the folder icon has become paler than usual. But you see it now. But if you do not have the settings to see hidden folders, then the folder that you made hidden will disappear altogether.
How to hide a folder permanently? You need to go to the "Control Panel" menu and select "Folder Options". If this item is not there, select "View: Small Icons" at the top right. Next, look in the "View" tab, check the box "Do not show hidden files, folders and drives" and click "OK".
When this is done, your folder with the "Hidden" attribute will become invisible, and now I will tell you how to find the hidden folder in this case. All you need to do is go to the "Control Panel" menu again and select "Folder Options" and in the "View" tab, select "Show hidden files, folders and drives". In the screenshot above, this item is below. Now you will be able to see the folder again in the same place where it was before. If you want to make the folder visible again, then again go to "Properties" and uncheck "Hidden", that's all you need to know about how to see hidden folders.
Hiding folders using the command line
Contrary to the name, this option to hide a folder is no less simple. In order to learn how to do this using the command line, you must first start the command line, in which you can set commands for Windows using special sets of commands and parameters. Windows will decrypt the commands and perform the desired action. Click on the "Start" menu and enter cmd in the search bar and click on the program that appears with the same name.
Now you need to enter the command in the window that opens.
attrib +h "folder address"
The folder address must be replaced with your path to the folder, to find it out, you need to go to the folder and click once on the empty space of the top line of the explorer. The path that appears must be selected and copied, then you can paste the path on the command line without typing on the keyboard, right-click on the command line and select "Paste". The Ctrl+V combination does not work here, so you can only paste the address with the mouse.
Press "Enter" and now you need to select "Do not show hidden files and folders", as in the previous case, so that the folder is completely invisible. And also you can make it visible, as in the previous case. Now you know how you can hide folders and files, but to make it visible you can type the command:
attrib -h "folder address" and press "Enter".
Here we have analyzed another way to make hidden folders visible.
Making an invisible folder on the desktop
Now I will tell you how to hide a folder on the desktop without changing its properties. Although you can hide the folder on the desktop in the way described above. To do this, place the folder on your desktop, right-click on it and select "Properties". In the window that opens, in the "Settings" tab, select "Change Icon".
From all the icons, select transparent, click "OK" and again "OK".
If this does not happen, copy the folder with the changed icon to another drive, delete it on the desktop, and then transfer it back and the icon will disappear. Now we need to remove the name. To do this, right-click on the folder icon and click "Rename". Erase the name and type 255 while pressing "ALT". This will set the folder name to a space, which means the name will no longer be visible.
Finding this folder will be easy only if you know that it exists, and the rest will only see a blank space on the screen!
"Hidden folders" are those that the user cannot normally see. Some of them are hidden by default, as they contain system files, the removal of which can disrupt the entire system. Sometimes folders become invisible due to a virus, and then important files may not be viewable. In any case, if you need to see the contents of a hidden folder, you must first find it. This article is designed to make your search easier.
We remove covers
So, how to show hidden folders? This is easy to do, even if you are new to working on a computer. We will show you two ways.
The first, and easiest, is to use the control panel (located in the Start menu). In this case, you will use the standard system tools. You need:
You can also use the Total Commander program (this is a file manager, one of the most convenient and functional, and is also available for free download). Then your actions are as follows:
Now you can easily find out what is contained in invisible (until now) folders.
Just remember that hidden files in Windows 7 are usually system-critical components that need to be handled very carefully. Accidental deletion may result in the need to reinstall the system. So it's better not to go there unless absolutely necessary.
Return trip
But it may also happen that you do not need to see the hidden elements, but, on the contrary, make them unavailable for viewing, for example, in the office. However, hiding personal information on a work computer in this way is not worth it: after all, managers are not fools, and for a system administrator to open hidden information will not be a problem at all. But in order not to show something to children who are still poorly versed in computers, this method is quite suitable.
If you are interested in how to hide a folder in Windows, then you should do the following:
- Select on the computer the item you want to hide
- Right-click on it, then left-click on "Properties"
- In "Attributes" check the box next to "Hidden"
- Click "Apply" and OK
You can see that the goal has been reached by refreshing the window. Now even the search will not find your information (unless, of course, the display of hidden elements is enabled).
