…Clueless

The article at over at Lifehacker explains how to mask your folder as the “Control Panel”. But since Lifehacker is quite a popular online publication, it’s possible that many average users now know how to mask their secret folders as the Windows “Control Panel”. But what this also means is that many users who spot a stray control panel folder might instantly recognize that there’s something fishy! So is there a way out? Yes! You can always mask your folders differently and make them point towards different special folders of the Windows OS, namely:

• Network Neighborhood / My Network Places
• Control Panel
• Recycle Bin
• Printers / Printers and Faxes
• My Computer
• Dial-Up Networking / Network Connections

The nomenclature might depend upon the flavour of Windows that you use. So now that makes it 6 different ways to mask your folder. Cool! Now that we you know what all folders can be used to mask your plain folder, make a choice and lets get started.

First you need to create a normal, unprotected folder in any directory. If you do not even know how to do that, I suggest you exit this page now.

Now that you have made a new “folder”, we shall proceed further. The Lifehacker post leads us to online-tech-tips.com which explains to us the procedure of turning your dumbass normal folder into a kickass special folder. The method involves the renaming of your normal folder with some special extension. Here are the extensions for the six special folders I mentioned above.

• Network Neighborhood / My Network Places :

.{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}

• Control Panel :

.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

• Recycle Bin :

.{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

• Printers / Printers and Faxes :

.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}

• My Computer :

.{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

• Dial-Up Networking / Network Connections :

.{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48}

Now that you know the extensions for the special folders, all you have to do is simply rename them. Renaming can be done by firing up notepad and pasting the following text (assuming “Folder” is the name of your folder) :

ren Folder Folder.{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

I am using the extension for Recycle Bin in my example (reason for this later). Now click on the File menu and hit Save As. Simply save this file with a “.bat” extension in the same folder as your “Folder”. Name the file open.bat

Once you’ve saved the file, navigate to the place where your folder resides. Double click on open.bat and you folder will be renamed. The icon will change to that of the Recycle Bin and the folder name “Folder” shall be postfixed by the extension which is visible : “Folder.{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}“.

When I had tried this method back in the year 2005, the extension of the folder was not visible after the renaming. Apparently, it is at the moment. So, even after renaming your folder by using a BAT file you can see the extension, then simply forget about creating a BAT file and running it to see your special folder. Just right click on your folder and select rename. Just skip to the end of your folder name and paste the extension for the special folder you want. Voila! Instant special folders!! But if the BAT method works for you, then its even better because your masking becomes pretty realistic.

Hop on to the next page…

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