Windows 7: restrict the visibility of certain folders

Hi Shawn, thanks for the quick and prompt reply.



I have several user accounts and I want to restrict the visibility of certain folders to certain user accounts. How do I do that ? And I have only Home Basic.

I don't want to other users to see certain folders that exist in my HDD.

Harish,

You could hide the folder, but it will hide it for all users.

If the other users are standard users and not administrators, then you could just keep the folder in one of your user folders for them to never be able to see or access it.

If you like, you could use the tutorial below to set the permission settings of the folders to add the user if not already, and "Deny" the specific users access permission. It will not hide the folder, but will prevent them from being able to open it. Just be very careful to not deny "Everyone" or your user account. Both will lock you out as well. However, if the other users are administrators, then they can just as well grant themselves access again.

Permissions - Allow or Deny Users and Groups

Thanks Brink.
I guess by "user folders", you mean the "documents", "pictures", "music" and those kind of stuff.

By the way is there a performance penalty for keeping huge files/folders in the "My Documents" folder of your user account ?

You're welcome.

Yes, those would be the user folders I meant.

There would be no performance hit other than the space it uses on the C: partition/HDD. If you had a ton of large video or image files in one folder, then it may take a bit longer to load their thumbnails when you open the folder though.