Windows 7 Viewing Some Hidden Files

[Tulmaster]

Greetings to all,

Okay, I am trying to keep an open mind to the point that I invested my money into Win 7 Ult. 64 bit. While I find that it has some interesting addons, like Vista I find that is appears to be warmed over XP with the same features, just renamed and in different places so as to seem new. Now, that being said the deal breakers is really whether or not I can access and view files that I wish to. It seems no matter how I set up my admin access I can not view files such as, Temporary Internet files, cookies and many others unless I go through a 3rd party program such as Norton Utilities 10.5. In XP I could find and view them without problems. In Win 7, not only can I not view them but the difficulty in even finding that they exist makes me wonder what other files hold information that I wish to know about but windows is hiding from me.

So, 2 questions. Can anyone give me an easy fix that will allow all files to be exposed to me AND viewable to me via Windows Explorer and 2, While Win 7 some nice little add ons can anyone explain what makes it fundamentally better than XP so that I would want to stay with it rather than going back to XP? Thanks to all for the help

 

[Joe S]

Did you uncheck hide protected system files in folder options?
Joe

 

[Tulmaster]

Yes that was done, but even then is seems that any folder which has a small arrow on the icon prohibits viewing.

 

[stueycaster]

In order to view those files you need to Take ownership of them.

Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista - How-To Geek

But even at that those files are usually just another way of getting to a file that you are allowed to go to through another path. Like "Documents and Settings" is unneeded because you go there through "Users".

The way I understand it those files are just leftovers from previous versions of Windows. I think you should check "Hide protected operating system files". I personally don't mess with them. I think the people who wrote the o/s know better than me about how it needs to run in my system.

Update: I had it wrong. Check out the next few posts. Thanks Trouble.

 

[Joe S]

This might help too Access the real Administrator account in Windows 7 | Microsoft Windows | TechRepublic.com
Joe

 

[Trouble]

Take a few minutes and read about junction points and how some of the locations that you seem to be having trouble accessing may not actually be what we all might think they are but may actually just be symbolic links. Here's a couple links that may help explain some of this;
Link Removed - Invalid URL
Svrops.com - Windows Vista Junction Points
Keep us posted.

 

[stueycaster]

Thanks Trouble. I know I read about why we don't need to ever access those files but it wasn't explained as well and it was quite a while ago. They're not there for our use but for the use of older programs. The links that are available are all we need to run our computers.

Also there's no need for us to view the "Protected operating system files". Besides when you show them it puts 2 grayed out icons for "desktop.ini" on your desktop.

 

[clutzyninja]

My biggest issue is being denied access to ANYthing on MY system. Just now I tried to kill a problematic process in task manager and was told access denied. This is absolutely INFURIATING. It's MY goddamn system, there should be NOTHING I don't have access to, other than perhaps the windows source code. This is like being told I'm not allowed in a room in my own house. Maybe I get unreasonably angry about this, but it makes me want to put a foot through my computer every time it happens.