Show and hide hidden files using the context menu

You can now enhance the rightclick context menu with the commands ‘Show hidden files’ and ‘Hide hidden files by making a small modifi cation to your Windows registry. With this option you will save a lot of clicks in the future. For activating this option all you need to do is to go to ‘Start’  and type in ‘regedit.exe’ in the ‘Search for programs and files’ field. Windows immediately displays
the result of your search in the Start menu. Now open the registry editor. If you are using an account without any administrator rights then right-click on the entry and select the command ‘Run
as administrator’ in the subsequent menu. After having done this, select an administrator account and type in the relevant password. Now, at the left pane, navigate to the key ‘HKEY_CLASSES_
ROOT\Directory\Background\shell’. You can generate a new entry here by clicking ‘Edit | New | Key’. Change the default name suggested by Windows in the option ‘Show hidden fi les’. Then add another name ‘command’ under the new key, mark it and then open it in the right-hand pane by double-clicking the entry ‘(Standard)’. Add the command ‘reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\
Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v Hidden /t reg_dword /d1 /f’ in the ‘Edit character string’ field under the option ‘Value’. As described above, generate the key ‘Hide hidden files’under ‘HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell’ in order to add the command ‘Hide hidden fi les’ to the context menu. Allocate the option ‘(Standard)’ using the string ‘reg add

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ Advanced/v Hidden / t reg_dword /d 2 /f’. Now, close the registry editor and restart your system. Both the new commands will now be seen in the context menu if you right-click in Windows Explorer. Use [F5] to refresh as soon as you use one of these two commands so as to be able to see or hide the files.