If you have some files and/or folders that you would like to be hidden, this tutorial will show you how to mark them as system files so that they will only be displayed when the options to show system files is enabled. First we will look where this option is checked at. Also, keep in mind that you can access system files without enabling the view by simply typing the path into the address bar. For starters, lets make sure our computer is set to hide system files.
Start by opening any folder that you would like. At the top of the window, click on tools and select Folder Options.
This is the main folder options window. At the top of the window you see all the tabs we have to choose from to configure more options. Select the View tab.
In the view tab you will see a whole lot of options in the lower scroll box. Scroll down until you see an option that says “Hide Protected Operating System Files (Recommended)”. If it is checked it is hiding those files, which is what we want.
Next create a folder on your desktop.
Name the folder “system”.
Click on Start and select “Run”
Type CMD into the run box that comes up.
This will launch the above pictured command prompt window. Now we need to get to our directory. Type “cd C:\Documents and Settings\*USERNAME*\Desktop” without the quotes (where *USERNAME* is what you are logged onto the machine as.
You command prompt should now look like this^^.
Type “DIR” (Again, without the quotes) and you should see all the contents of your desktop appear in the window. You should be able to locate our “system” folder that we created.
Take a second to create a coupe of files within the folder we created. Name them anything you would like.
My files in the folder.
Now back to our command prompt window. Type in “attrib +h +s system” This command will make our “system” folder hidden as well as a system folder. It will disappear from the desktop.
If you run the command “DIR” again, you will also notice, that it has disappeared from the desktop in the command prompt window as well. Well, if I can’t get to it, how can I get the files from it. Since we know where we put the file, which in this case the path would be: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\system, we can access the file directly by doing the following.
Open my computer.
Type in the path of the folder
Once you press enter, it will take you to your folder and you will be able to see the contents of the folder while it is still hidden. You can see the files that we created in the beginning. This concludes this tutorial. I hope it was easy to follow and thanks for reading.
