Folder – hidden attribute greyed out – Easy Fix!

So, most likely you are recovering from a malware or virus infection and you have found that on certain folders you are unable to untick the hidden attribute (usually greyed out). Well heres a quick and simple fix!

A little Background info first!

I found a laptop infected with a strain of win32.Malware-gen, what a sneaky strain at that! After a poke around of what it does i found the malware made any folder (on the infected USB drive) hidden, read only and also made a .exe file for every folder name with a folder icon! this was its way of tricking people into running it. It seems to target USB drives to spread.

I found they were all exe files by unticking the option in folder options “hide extensions for known filetypes” while your in there tick “show hidden files and folders”

Anyway on with the simple fix. once you have cleaned up the virus!! and deleted the foldername.exe files

from command prompt. Issue the command (assuming the drive in question is F:)

attrib -H -S F:\*.* /S /D

The folders should once again be visable and you will be able to toggle the hidden attribute, it will no longer be greyed out.

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16 thoughts on “Folder – hidden attribute greyed out – Easy Fix!”

  1. U r such a bastard , gave a very good idea thank u mother fucker

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  2. Good job, worked very well

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  3. Thanks mate so much my phones files were hidden ur a brilliant man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  4. thanx alot
    u r perfect

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  5. Download the program (very small) – Hidden file tool.
    Works 100%.

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  6. thanks a lot works like magic

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  7. I visited many websites but your solution was the only one that worked. Long Live

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  8. Thanks worked perfectly.

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  9. Thanks! I really was scratching my head!

    Straight and simple, bravo………

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  10. I have the same problem but I’m unsure how to type in the command prompt. Once in the command window- Do I type exactly as shown including spaces? Has not worked for me so far.

    Thank you!

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  11. Nevermind! It worked perfectly once I realized I was typing in for a different drive.

    Thanks for the great tip 🙂

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  12. Thank’s Very Much, so GREAT Solution for that Worm.

    !!! Thank’s go Ahead !!!!

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  13. Wonderful. The command took a few minutes to run in cmd (which worried me for a moment there … ) and to my great relief the folders were again visible!!!!

    Many thanks for the solution!

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  14. Worked flawlessly!

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  15. Many sites gave the same solution, but your solution explained everything easily and worked perfectly.
    Thank you very much.

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  16. Perfect! Thank you!!!

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