Let's first figure out what all the invisible folders are for. Hidden directories are used mainly to hide information from users. You can independently make them invisible, or, conversely, restore hidden folders, i.e. Make them again visible. There are several ways to do this. However, there are frequent cases of hiding directories without any user actions, let's talk about such situations.
Where do the invisible folders come from?
The appearance of hidden directories can be associated with the actions of both the user himself, and viruses or the system itself. But in order to understand in general whether there are invisible folders (and also to determine where the existing ones suddenly disappeared), you must first enable their display in the explorer. To do this, go to the "Properties folder ...", which is located in the "Tools" menu at the top of Windows Explorer. If you do not see this menu, you should press the "Alt" key. Go to the properties of the folder, you need to open the "View" tab and find in the list from the bottom "Hidden files and folders". It remains only a little lower to move the check mark to "Show hidden files and folders". However, system directories will still remain invisible. In order to display them, you need to remove the checkmark in the same list from the item "Hide protected system files". It is necessary to perform the last action. This is due to the fact that viruses hide files and folders in most cases, making them systematically.
So in your Explorer all invisible folders will be displayed. This also applies to those directories that were hidden by users, and those that hid the viruses.
Do invisible folders again visible
Very often viruses infect files and folders stored on USB-flash drives. They hide the original directories, creating their own with exactly the same Names. And when the folder is opened, the virus program starts, which then settles in the computer. And if the computer to which the flash drive will connect, invisible folders are not displayed, then the virus will accurately penetrate into the system. After all, the user himself will be to blame. To prevent this and save the necessary information, you need to restore the folders.
To do this, the directory needs to remove the attribute "Hidden". Click the mouse (right button) on the desired folder and select "Properties" in the opened menu. A small window will open, from the bottom of which you need to remove the checkmark next to the word "Hidden".
However, this does not always work if the virus has tried very well. To solve the problem and open invisible folders, you can use the command line. To do this, press the "Win" and "R" keys at the same time. A window opens where you want to enter "CMD" and press "Enter" or the "OK" button. This opens the command line.
Then the procedure will be more complicated. First you need to enter "cd - space - the letter of the local disk where the folders (C, D, F, etc.) are located - a colon", press Enter. If the directories are in the root of the disk, then the following for each folder should be entered in the command line: "attrib - space - folder name - space - -R - space - -S - space - -H", press Enter. Pay attention to the "-" sign in front of the letters, it needs to be written too. So we remove the attributes "Read Only", "System" and "Hidden" from a folder or file. And if the directories are nested inside each other, you must first enter the one that contains the target object. To do this, we use "cd - space - folder name" until we are inside the required one, only then we remove the attributes. There are also many programs that make life easier in this matter. One of them is Total Commander. It's also worth pointing out that if you perform all the reverse actions, you can hide folders from extraneous eyes (in the command "attrib" you can put a "+" sign instead of "-" - so we hide the folders and make them system, and read-only) .