Hidden Files and Folders - Show or Hide

question... before windows 7, i always hid some files that are created in the "My Documents" folder (well, the folder named after myself since Vista)...

anyway... i want to hide or get rid of Favorites, Saved Games, Contacts, etc... before i was able to simply hide them via right-click-properties, however on windows 7, when i do that, they're still there!! not even faded out or anything!

first thing i did before posting this was to go into Folder Options to activate, and reactivate the view hidden folder options... nothing.

know why my folders won't hide?

seems the folders became hidden after i restarted the computer... but i'm still baffled why they won't go hidden immediately after applying the Hide properties...

thanks for your help!

bartman2589 said:

was hoping for a solution that would allow me to still have the system files visible (i.e. fix the behavior of the 'show hidden files' option so that it functions on a per folder basis the way it does in XP).

Bart, I think you are mistaken. I'm using XP (and have been for years). That option has always been global. It doesn't work on a per-folder basis. You can, however, set the attribute for specific folders to be hidden or not, which will probably do what you need.

Actually happinessiseasy I think you might be mistaken (or not quite understanding what I want to accomplish). I too have been using XP for a number of years (almost from the day it was first released), and one of the first things I do after installing XP is to set my folder preferences to show all system files and show all hidden files as well as to show protected operating system files and make it display extensions for known file types (I've had friends of mine that have been bitten by viruses that were actually .vbs scripts but weren't immediately recognizable as such because the extension was hidden), I also set explorer to display file details as opposed to thumbnails or any other view style then I apply this to ALL folders using the handy little button, now when I do this on XP with SP2 or above I don't end up seeing the desktop.ini file residing on my desktop however if I open the folder that contains the desktop icons for my user account in windows explorer I DO see the desktop.ini file telling me that XP has elected not to show it on the desktop (which is exactly the way I want it), I will grant you that under SP1 and prior XP did in fact show the desktop.ini files on my desktop when I chose to enable viewing of hidden and system and protected OS files, but under SP2 and above it does not (if necessary I can take a screenshot showing windows explorer open with the desktop.ini file visible in explorer but not actually visible on the desktop). However Windows7 does not behave this way (I don't know if this is true of Vista or not, nor do I care, as most people are aware Vista is easily one of the worst OS's Microsoft has released in the past 30 or so years).

I understand what you're saying, but I don't see the same behavior. I am running XP Pro SP3. Is this the same build you're running? The behavior that I see is system-wide (desktop included) and consistent with what I expect to see (i.e. the same as the behavior we both see in Windows 7).

Trying it just now, unchecking the "Hide protected operating system files" setting shows POSFs (files with SH attributes) everywhere, including the desktop, and the desktop viewed through Windows Explorer. I have never heard of a per-folder setting for this. In fact, all of the settings in the "Advanced Settings" box are system-wide, not per-folder. I don't know why they put "Apply to All Folders" on the same tab, honestly.

happinessiseasy said:

Trying it just now, unchecking the "Hide protected operating system files" setting shows POSFs (files with SH attributes) everywhere, including the desktop, and the desktop viewed through Windows Explorer. I have never heard of a per-folder setting for this. In fact, all of the settings in the "Advanced Settings" box are system-wide, not per-folder.

Nor have I ever seen the behavior that bartman2589 describes. In fact I tested this just now on both XP SP2 and SP3. The "Advanced Settings" tab is indeed only global settings. The "Apply to all folders" button only applies the visual layout of the current window (icons vs. list vs. details view, column spacing, etc.) to all other folders.

I've never ever seen one folder display hidden files while another does not. I tried it every which way just now and I simply couldn't duplicate this alleged behavior.

I'm not arguing that bartman2589 did not succeed in getting his desktop.ini files to disappear off his desktop, but it can't be from selectively applying the Advanced Settings to one folder and not another. I would bet that there is some other explanation for why the desktop.ini files are disappearing in this case.

Personally, I just delete them from the Desktop folders. I've never had any problems from this.

bartman2589 said:

I don't know if this is true of Vista or not, nor do I care, as most people are aware Vista is easily one of the worst OS's Microsoft has released in the past 30 or so years

I'm not sure what this statement has to do with this topic, but examine the logic in it. "I do not know whether or not Vista behaves according to my preference, but it doesn't matter, because Vista is terrible."

To this day, I simply cannot understand the phenomenon of Vista-bashing for nothing more than the sake of Vista-bashing.