free way to lock your folders in windoze

i dont know if anyone has found this out or not but you can fool windows explorer(file manager) into thinking a legitimate folder has been "moved or removed". all you have to do is open a dos prompt and rename the folder to whatever name you want(doesn't matter can stay the same) except put an underscore in front. only dont use the underscore on your keyboard(shift+-) . use alt+255 (for the retards, the 255 is typed in on the little keypad to your right :). instead of making an underscore it makes a space. this is what you want. hit enter and try to open it in windows explorer. nice way to hide special folders from roommates or siblings or parents or any nosey **** you dont want looking at your pr0n :)


p.s. of course to access folder...just reverse the process.

-bios

2 things:
1) alt+255 is not an underscore(AFAIK)
2) this will not work on any current systems...just 95/(maybe)98. nothing newer.

8ball you are wrong. I just tried it on my system XP pro and it worked. He didn't explain it very clearly you type +_ not +- . Then you type the alt 255 which makes a space and renders the file hidden or somethin.....

erm....i must be missing something here cause i have done this and had it work on old 95 boxes, but never any 98/2k/ME....and i just retried with my 2k box...nothin. can traverse and add/delete and everything....perhaps you could provide a better explination?
the way i always used to do it was this:
open a dos prompt. use the "md" command to make a directory and in the name use the alt+255 charecter somewhere in the dir name. this directory would then show an error whenever you tried to open it or delete it or anything, and you would have to open a dos prompt to change the name back so you could then access it again

Suprisingly enough it does seem to work even on NT based win kernels.. (ie: nt, w2k, xp)

However the 255 IS NOT an underscore but rather a blank character like 8 ball said...

Ammo

hmm i just tried it again like 20 times and it didn't work.... Very Odd ......

alright people, it goes like this. in the dos promt, say you want to change the C:\windows\**** directory to be hidden, you type "rename C:\windows\**** *****" the asterick being holding down alt while typing 255 in the numberpad. notice right before the star there is a space.

kind of a cool trick...

But, why not just use file permissions if you have NT, 2000, or XP?

It doesn't work on my Win2K box.
I've tried every possible way, so I'm a bit confused about this.

Grtz,

sparkant.

i remember this trick back in win 9x days as well, and forgot about it until now. i too just attempted to do it again on my win2k box at work and discovered that i can still enter the folder, add to it, etc. adding the 255 character did not make any difference. not through dos and not through the windows gui. it is still visible and can be altered. it seems to automaticly remove the 255 character. the only reasonable guess i can think of is if you have a different file system. i am currently using ntfs. perhaps this trick only works on fat or fat32. if anyone is using a version of the fats, post and let us know the results. same with those using ntfs. i would like to get to the bottom of this.

:confused:

I did this to someone i was pissed off at a long ass time ago. I copied everyfile on his Harddrive like 5 times and put them all into one of these "locked" folders. I couldnt help but laugh as he explained in class that he couldnt understand why 40 gigs had dwindled to 100 megs over night. Gawd that was mean. Oh well, you live, you learn.Cool thing about his feature is that when you try and delete it, it gives an error. And when you try and pull the properties, size comes back 0kb. :) I thought i was slick when i did this......ohhhhhhhh.....2 years ago. Now i know I was just taking advantage of this poor trusting fool.

That could be the cause of the difference we experience.
I also use NTFS.

Grtz,

sparkant.

Nice trick, but a little bit oldie....it used to work on 9x win's.....not anymore...
But.....like Invictus said....why not using permissions on NT, 2k, XP boxes instead of this ????

oldie but goodie...i remember back in HS everyone thought i was l33t because i knew the 'secrets' of ASCII characters. Ah...the good ol' days

ive had success with it on win95, win98/SE, win2kpro machines. sorry if some think i didnt explain it very well to 8ball i meant to use the character from alt-255 in the space right before whatever name you want to call the folder you are hiding. not just anywhere in the folder name. and also, to whoever said that that isnt an underscore, it is in the gui. try it. ______
heh. its just that the character set for ms-dos commands is different so the gui is fooled.

Nice little trick!!!!! Man this was new to me like everything in here dont think there has been a day i have not learnt somthing new!

Kindred69

ammo alt 255 is an underscore when you are in the gui. its a blank space in ms-dos. like i said its the character sets that are used are different. the blank space is what renders the folder hidden while in the GUI.