how to find the hidden files in windows xp?
By stardustcdsd
@stardustcdsd (1856)
India
July 2, 2010 6:40am CST
hi friends.
by the time i get response for my discussion,it might be too late.but its worth a try.
i dont have a computer so i go to a browsing center for all my activities.
my 6 months worth of works were stored in the D drive ( because this is the only drive that doesnt get affected while restaring the system )
i stored about 1 GB worth of files but got worried about people deleting it.
so i hide the file so it wont be visible to anyone unless they try to delete all the files in the D drive at once.
today as usual i opened the D drive and tried my usual way of going to folder options and clicking "show hidden files and folders" but nothing happened.
i tried even typing in the address bar of the folder but not found.
when i clicked on the properties of D,i found it still got the folder because it showed 1GB in use and 20 GB free.
i thought somebody must have deleted it and it could be at the recle bin but nothing there too.
when i tried to empty the so called empty recyle bin,it asked me "if i want to delete the other 41 hidden items in the recycle bin."
i tried everything but nothing worked.
seems like my files are hanging somewhere between recycle bin and D drive.
any help will be appreciated.
1 person likes this
4 responses
@Imran_A (82)
• India
2 Jul 10
Oh..Thatz bad that you don't have a PC...So it not safe to keep you files there but however if you need to recover it use Recover My Files software. Thank will help you to recover all the files without missing anyone..But you need to wait for a long time to complete it's task but it's worth to wait because you will get back all your files. Let me know if this one worked :)
@cableman67 (872)
• United States
4 Jul 10
I don't know if I can help you recover your lost files; you may just have to keep looking. If you go to the recycle bin and RESTORE everything then it should put your files back in place where you had them. That is if they were deleted normally. It is possible that in trying to hide your files that you got confused as to where they actually are. If you remember the name of the folder then you can do a search and it will turn up.
In the future I suggest you invest in a flash drive and you simply plug it into the usb port of the computer you are using and save your files to it. It will show up in "my computer" as a removable storage drive. Then when you are through you simply unplug it and take your data with you. The most popular flash drives have one to two gigabytes of memory for around ten bucks or less but you can get them with more storage room if necessary.
@TheCatLady (4691)
• Israel
2 Jul 10
Once you find your files, you might want to invest in a disk on key. They are really cheap and not much bigger than a little box of matches. I think I paid $10 for 4G. You can put all you files on this and take them anywhere you want. Nice and safe. Leaving anything at the browsing center is dangerous. Even if people don't erase them, they can find them and cause mischief.
@knicnax (2233)
• Philippines
2 Jul 10
I agree with ravinair (the first post) I was about to answer the question but saw that he answered first. anyway, here's a more detailed way of doing this.
open RUN by pressing and holding the windows key then press r.
when the run program opens, type "cmd" without the quotation marks. this will open command prompt. It's a small window with a black background and white text. Usually the text will show "C:/Documents and Settings/Username" or something like that. this is called your directory.
type "D:" without the quotation marks. your directory would change to "D:/". now type "attrib -s -h "folder name"" without the first set of quotation marks. This will make your folder a normal folder. Basically what you did was to remove the "hidden" attribute of the folder.
The reason why the show hidden files feature is not working is probably a virus. Most viruses disable showing hidden files and folders so that the virus can't be seen and then deleted.
tell us if this works for you :)
