Hide Any Drive Through Group Policy Editor

Till now we have learn how to hide any drive from explorer in two ways -
    1.   Hide your drives in explorer with command prompt
    2.   Hide your drives in explorer with regedit

Now its turn for moving on to another level, lets suppose a virus or your administrator has blocked both command prompt and regedit but you still want to hide your drive, in that case Group Policy Editor will come in play.
 
Here is how to do it:

Step 1. Open Group Policy Editor (Press Win+R and type Gpedit.msc and press Enter)



Step 2. Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Component > Windows Explorer

Step 3. Now on the right Hand side i.e Settings Pane look for Hide these specified drives in My Computer.

Step 4. Double Click on it and Enable it, now choose from the drop down box which drive you want to hide (I choose All – Restrict All Drives)

Step 5. Now click on Apply and click OK, now you can see that Hide these specified drives in My Computer is Enabled.


Step 6. Now logoff and login back to see changes.
 
Step 7. In order to get them back go to Gpedit and set the Hide these specified drives in My Computer setting to Disable. That’s it.

Unlock Password Protected Files Without any Software

Portable Document Format files, PDF files can be locked and password protected by several ways. And they carries several meanings as well. Some password protected PDF file can be viewed and read easily but we’ll need to input password to copy the text and images from it. Besides copy paste, the PDF file can be password protected to publish it in print media by disabling or password protecting the Printing ability of the document. Unless you read eBooks in printed form, it’s not necessary to unlock these PDF as most of the time you read it in your favorite eBook reader.

However there are several Portable Document files that needs password to read and get viewed. This time you will be in chain because you don’t have the password to open it.

But don’t worry folks! You are just a click away from unlocking these PDF files. Now you can easily unlock any password protected PDF files from online tool.

Unlock-PDF.com has been providing such free online tool to unlock the PDF files. Unlock-PDF.com provides very user friendly and simple steps to unlock the PDF file.


To unlock PDF files, click on Choose File and click on Unlock File button. After unlocking, the browser will automatically download the unlocked PDF file.


This online tool can be very useful.

Hide Folders using Command Prompt

This is a small trick which can be done by changing the attributes of folders

1. Open Command prompt.

2. Type the command given below to hide the folders
          Attrib +s +h drive:\folder name

3. To retrive your file use this command
          Attrib –s –h drive:\folder name


For example: Lets assume that there is a folder called ‘X’ in drive ‘D’

I will hide it by use the command
          Attrib +s +h D:\x

That’s it you done it. If you want it back, use this command
         Attrib –s –h D:\x

 

Hide any Drive Through Regedit

In the previous tutorial we showed you how you can hide your drives in explorer with command prompt, now its time to use some alternatives. Suppose that command prompt is locked, so what you will do? yes, that’s why we are using Registry Editor as an alternative.

You can hide any drive with a simple registry edit, by following the below steps -

1. Go to Start Menu > Run (WIN+R) > Type regedit and press enter, to launch Registry Editor.

2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies

3. Right click on Policies > New > Key and rename it to Explorer (If Explorer Key is not there)



3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

4. Now Right click on the right side pane and click on New > DWORD value and rename it as NoDrives




5. Now suppose you want to hide C drive, so right click on NoDrives > Modify


6. Change the Base Type to Decimal and Value Data to 4 (for C drive)


Similarly, for hiding other drives use different Value data from the below table-

To hide drive A and drive D, you would add 1 (A) + 8 (D) which means the value should be set to “9″.

6. Log Off and Log In back to see changes.

Hide any Drive Through Command Prompt

Have you ever thought of hiding any drive from your system so that no one can knew about it. You may have heard or even used a lot of software’s that might be able to do that, but if you are GEEK and want to do things by your own without using any 3rd party software than this tutorial will show you how you can do it.

Well there are 3 ways of doing it, in this tutorial we are covering command prompt way of doing it.

Step 1. Open command Prompt, go to Start Menu > All Programs >Accessories > Command prompt

Step 2. In the Command Prompt, type Diskpart and hit enter key. If UAC (User Account Control), dialog-box prompts than click Yes.

Step 3. Then type List Volume and press enter, this will produce the list of all drives.



Step 4. Now select the drive which you want to hide, you can either do this by typing Select Volume 1 (i.e. Volume Number) or by typing Select Volume C(i.e. Drive letter)


Step 5. To hide a drive, type Remove Letter C. Here, C is the drive letter than you want to hide. You can use any drive letter you want.


Step 6. That’s it. You are done! C drive is now hidden



How to unhide hidden drive:


Step 1. Follow the procedure mentioned in step 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Step 2. To show the hidden drive type Assign Letter C and hit enter, now you can view C: drive in explorer.