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Show Hidden Files and Folders Missing or Does Not Work

Last Updated on: July 13, 2021 by Ramesh

The Folder Options dialog’s View tab allows you to show or hide hidden and system (protected) files in Explorer. The hidden files have the HIDDEN attribute. Protected files (aka, “super-hidden ” files) have the SYSTEM attribute.

There have been many support incidents lately where the File Explorer does not show hidden files and folders even though you enable the Show hidden files, folders and drives option in the Folder Options dialog. However, the files and folders can be viewed when using Windows Search or using the DIR /A command from a Command Prompt window.

Also, when you go to open the Folder Options and click the View tab, both the radio buttons Do not show hidden files and folders and Show hidden files, folders and drives may be enabled.

How to Rebuild Icon Cache in Windows 10 or 11

Last Updated on: August 2, 2022 by Ramesh

We may face the icon cache corruption issue sometimes in Windows 10/11 and earlier OS. The icon cache corruption causes the wrong icons to show up for certain programs or in certain areas of the Windows shell, or no icons at all. For example, your pinned taskbar shortcuts may show up with the wrong icon.Read more

Clear Recent Files history Using Script in Windows 10

Last Updated on: June 9, 2021 by Ramesh

Did you notice that in Windows it takes exactly half a dozen mouse clicks to clear the recent items history? This post has a VBScript to clear the recent documents history in a single click in Windows 10 and earlier. Clear Recent Files history in Windows In Windows 10, here is the procedure to clear … Read more

List Running Processes And Their Creation Times

Last Updated on: May 12, 2019 by Ramesh

The Windows Task Manager does not list the creation time and date of running processes. To get this info, you may use one of these methods.Read more

Change the Default Editor for Batch files in Windows

Last Updated on: June 19, 2021 by Ramesh

When you right-click on a Windows batch file (.bat) file and click Edit, Notepad opens the file by default. If you have a Notepad replacement software installed in your system, you can set it as the default editor for Windows batch files.

Reset the Always ask before opening this type of file setting

Last Updated on: June 24, 2019 by Ramesh

When downloading files using Internet Explorer, you may see the Open/Save confirmation box (as shown below) for certain file types. If you uncheck the Always ask before opening this type of file check box, the preference is saved in the user part of the registry. Also, the configuration is stored in a separate registry value for each file type.

Here is how to reset the Open/Save choice for a specific file type or all file types in Internet Explorer.Read more

Desktop Icons Covered with White Boxes or Black Squares

Last Updated on: October 15, 2022 by Ramesh

Here is a mysterious case of the icon overlap problem, which the screenshot below explains perfectly. You can see the original icon for shortcuts is overlapped by a generic white overlay (which is shown for unknown file types). An incorrect icon overlay setting is causing the problem.Read more

Add Run as Administrator Context Menu Item for VBS and JS files

Last Updated on: June 4, 2019 by Ramesh

By default, Windows does not include the Run as Administrator option in the context menu for Vbscript (.VBS) and JScript (.JS) files. So, to run a script elevated, you either need to launch the script from elevated Command Prompt window, or use the VBScript self-elevation method as described in article How to Automatically Elevate a Vbscript to Run it as Administrator?

Besides that, you can add the Run as Administrator option to the context menu so that you can run a script elevated from the right-click menu.Read more

Add “Edit HOSTS file” option in the context menu

Last Updated on: June 4, 2019 by Ramesh

The HOSTS file, originally introduced to resolve hostnames to IP addresses, is also an effective tool to block Malware. To modify the HOSTS file in Windows, you need to elevate Notepad.exe or any other text editor which you use. Otherwise, you’ll see the following error when trying to save the HOSTS file:

Cannot create the C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file.

Make sure that the path and the file name are correct.

Register and Unregister DLLs Elevated via Right-click Context Menu

Last Updated on: July 4, 2019 by Ramesh

This post tells you how to add register and unregister commands to the right-click menu for DLL and OCX files in Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10.

To register a DLL or OCX file, you usually need to run regsvr32.exe from an elevated Command Prompt. Registering system DLLs from a non-elevated state may cause an error. For example, try to register the system module JScript.dll from Start, Search box (i.e., without elevating it). You’ll see the error 0x80004005 or 0x80007005 (“ACCESS IS DENIED”) when you do so.