Invisible Files

I have found several files that are installed on my system, that are not visible in a file manager. I have it set to show hidden files and protected operating system files, so what would be causing these files not to appear as they should? Is there something else that I can control that would make these files appear?

I found this article:

Invisible files with '._' prefix are created on some shared volumes and external disks | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

Which suggested to me that the problem might be due to some kind of corruption of the files, which apparently was the case for an invisible font. It had become corrupted by my previous CPU, just as the Windows drive had been, even though it was archived on a separate drive. I cross installed the font between my rigs, and it now appears as it should.

Yet, this doesn't seem to be the answer for some invisible drivers, because they were installed by Windows during the intial installation of the OS. If they were corrupted then, it would seem that they wouldn't be visible in the Device Manager and not in the file manager, so I'm still looking for answers.

Can you give some filename examples? And what program are you using to find these files that are not visible in explorer?

As I said, the files are drivers. In this case, the nForce4 IDE ATA/ATAPI portion of the set. It is not a program that I can view these in, it is the Details button of the driver tab of the devices in the Device Manager. The files involved are:

idecoi.dll
nvata.cat
nvide.nvu
nvstor.inf
nvstor.sys

I realize that some of these are just for the purpose of the installation, but the idecoi.dll and nvstor.sys are those visible for the Nvidia nForce Serial ATA Controllers.

The reason that I'm attempting to locate and verify their paths is because these fail to install on my secondary rig altogether, and I'm considering trying to do a manual install of them.

EDIT: I'm trying to attach screenshots of the Device Manager from both rigs, but for some reason, it works on the primary rig, but not on the secondary. I have to do them separately, since I haven't figured out how to setup the network yet.

Finally got it. As can be seen in the second shot on the right, this is how the secondary rig is now, and how the primary rig was before installing the nForce 4 drivers. I could be wrong, but since both motherboards are very similar and are both nForce 4, I assume that both should appear the same in the Device Manager.

EDIT: The drivers shown for the secondary rig appear to be those installed by the OS at the initial setup.

I managed to get the chipset drivers installed, so that it now appears the same in both Device Managers, but the problem remains with the invisible files on my primary rig. Comparing Windows/System32/Drivers folders on each machine, the secondary displays a content of 305 files, while the primary only shows 11. If anything, the primary should show more files than the secondary, because I have more hardware and software installed on it. I'm still scratching my head on how to display the true content of the folder, for I know that the files are there, I just can't see them.

It is times such as th is, that I believe that the computer is playing games with my mind. I know that I tried to find these files with Windows Explorer before without any luck, yet when I just tried, they are there as they should be.

I generally use a third party file manager, and even though W Explorer sees the files, my file manager still doesn't. I have Googled "super hidden files" and found returns for fixes going back to W2K to show these files, with solutions generally involving a regedit. I don't understand that, because it seems to do the same thing as changing the setting in Folder Options.

The options for my file manager has one to show/no show hidden files, but not for protected system files (super hidden), so it seems to ignore my folder options setting and continue hiding these files. I have it running as administrator and I am logged into the built in administrator account, so I fail to understand it's behavior.

I don't know that using a different file manager would work any better, because I have run into this before with others...just not so solidly. I don't guess that anyone would have a suggestion as to how to tame this problem...would they?