Hi

I think i was not able to make myself understood here.....

To hide a File you have to Set the h Attribute for the File...... Attrib file1 +h

Makes the File Hidden...........To see the file you need to select the radio button labeled Show hidden files and folders in Folder Options......

Now Windows 2000 and XP used a different Type of File Hiding..........Hiding their Protected Files....There is a .checkbox labeled Hide protected operating system files if you check this all the Files that are considered Protectd are hidden ........e.g Boot.ini etc

I was trying to see how does it find which files to hide.........Does it append a special attrubutes like the h attribute for hidden files or keeps a listing of all those files and hides all files in that list........what i found is it just hides files which has all four attributes set ( a s h r)...........Now if you Check this checkbox..........Windows looks for all those files that have all the four attributes set and consideres them as Protected file/folder and hides it........Including non protected ones which has all the Four Set ........


In windows 2000 / Xp to see all the hidden and system files you need to to do two things

# select the radio button labeled Show hidden files and folders.

# Remove the checkmark from the checkbox labeled Hide protected operating system files.

The thing that i was trying to pass here was how windows does that........how does hide it's protected files......How does it recognise files to be hidden.....

Now the Original Problem was similer to this in my openion that sonic555 was able to see the folder when he put in the whole path but was not able to see the Folder in explorer or with Dir w*...........My guess was that this folder has all the four Attributes set and windows is consedering it as a protected folder...........it might be something else we need sonic555 to check that out..............

If this is the case .........I wouldn't reccomend Unchecking the Hide protected operating system files....because it willl make all other protected files visible...and as he said it was not some important folder rather some random test1 folder....it wouldn't be practile to disable the Protection for some insignificant folder........rather remove the protecton form that very folder ... remove just one of the attribute from that very folder.......It will make just this folder visible.

And djscribble yes Attrib command lists them............Attrib Enter will give the list of all files including the ones Protected /hidden and similarly dir /ad will list Directories including protected ones......The thing is it's not a foolproof way of data hiding it's a way windows hides it's protected files........and you can make your file look to windows as protected.......they will be treated as protected and will be hidden as other protected system files.........


--Good Luck--

[Edit]
Oppsy ....For 5 long months i was under the impression that it's +a +s +h +r ....that hides them.............Actually when i looked at files that were hidden by that option....Hide protected files/Folders...i noticed they all had all the attributes set ....so when i did the same to my file it too went missing...(hidden)........just today i tried a few more things ...it's just the combination of two ........s and h Attributes that makes them hidden .....sorry my bad......