Thread: Hidden files

Hidden files can't even be seen by the Windows search tools without some tweaking. To protect your PC from clumsy clicking, the operating system hides important files by default. This means that experienced users quickly lose their patience if they want to, say, edit a line in Bootini quickly. But hidden files and folders can be made visible again with a few mouse clicks in the Explorer Tools/Folder options dialogue. Deselect 'Do not show hidden files and folders'. This will select Show hidden files and folders. You can also choose whether Windows should display the contents of system folders.

This means that Windows will not irritate you any longer by being too over-cautious, but whenever you try to open a file with an unregistered extension by doubleclicking on it, you'll see a dialogue complaining that the file can't be opened. Windows will suggest searching for a suitable program on the web. However, in our test the Windows File Associations site it takes you to did not suggest any matches for suffixes such as NCC, SAM or WQ 1.



We found the answers on To prevent Windows from starting any online queries in future when you attempt to open files of an unknown type (see screen 8), go to the Registry key Hkey-Local_Machine\Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\policies\ system. Choose Edit/New and then select Dword string. Enter the string NoInternet¬Open With. Next, select the new string and select Modify from the Edit menu. Make sure that Hexadecimal is selected and enter 1 in the Value
data field.

After the computer has been restarted, Windows will spare you the question about the web service. You can specify file type associations from the File Types section of the Tools/Folder Options dialogue.