Restore "Show Hidden Files and Folders" Option in Vista
I've received a number of emails from readers telling me that their computer has no option for "Show Hidden Files and Folders" in the Folder Options dialog. The question even showed up on the forum, where Scott promptly found a registry tweak which I'm sharing with everybody.
Note that if you don't have this option there's a very good chance of spyware infection somewhere, so you should scan your computer thoroughly. The scanner applications won't restore this setting, however.
To understand what I'm talking about, open Folder and Search Options from the Organize menu, and then choose the View tab, and you'll see that the entire "Hidden Files and Folders" radio button is completely gone!
Manual Registry Tweak
Open regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then navigate down to the following key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer
\Advanced\Folder\Hidden
Look for a key named Type on the right-hand side and change the value to group as shown above. If the key does not exist, create a new String value.
You should be able to immediately re-open the folder properties, and the option should have returned, as you can see here:
Many thanks to Scott for finding this… I hope it can help somebody.
You can also show hidden files and folders by searing for "folder" in the control panel.
Thank a lot guys that really helped me.
Do you know of a way to add "Show hidden files and folders" to the context menu? Maybe with the program "filemenu tools"?
Hi, I have the same problem, but in regedit, I can't find the "Hidden" folder in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer
\Advanced\Folder\Hidden
only
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer
\Advanced\Folder\
can you help me?
found a program from moon software that allows you to add "show hidden files" to the context menu. This is normally accessed by going in to tools>folder options>View>advanced settings>show hidden files and folders. So this shell extension is nice.
@Pedro: I exported a registry file of the hidden key. Just download it from http://www.techoddity.com/down.....hidden.reg and add it to the registry to restore the whole hidden registry key.