Enable Hidden Files, Folders and Drives in Windows
Some Trojans and viruses are smart enough and hide themselves in some corner of your computer system. They later on effectively disable the option of “Show hidden files & folders” or “show hidden folders, files & drives”. These two options are present under the Folder Options, and can be easily manipulated by the smart viruses and Trojans.
On being affected by such types of Trojans or viruses, your system will not show any of your hidden files or folders even if you enable the show hidden files command. “Shockwave.dll” is the policy implemented by the virus which forces the system to hide the files and folders on a permanent basis.
Some antivirus or antimalware programs are even not able to remove such inconvenient viruses. Below is given a technique that helps you solve it manually:
- Click on Run in the Start menu
- Run the Registry Editor by typing in the regedit command
- Find and select the registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Folder\Hidden\SHOWALL - If its checked value is not of the types REG_SZ, then delete the other present checked value data
- After deleting the old value, create the new DWORD value and rename it to CheckedValue
- Double click on it and change its value to 1
- Click on the radio button symbol for enabling REG_SZ
- Enable the show hidden files command and check whether it works or not
The above given solution is not foolproof, as some viruses cause hidden files and folders as visible errors.
Update: Recover hidden files and folders from virus affected USB.