Many viruses today hide themselves by putting their “watchdog” files in the system folders where typical computer users would never look at, or hide themselves.

Putting files in hidden mode is the easiest way to not make your files or folders viewable to the people looking at your files. To know how to hide files and foldes go to my tutorial on how to hide files and folders. If you want to see your hidden files and folders again without having to remove their Hidden status, go to my tutorial on how to show hidden files in windows.

Since not a lot of people know about hidden files and folders in windows, more and more viruses put themselves in Hidden status so as not to be seen by the user.

If my tutorial on how to show files in hidden status does not work, follow the instructions below:

1. click Start
2. click run
3. type “regedit” on the run window
4. click “ok”, the registry editor window should open
5. on the right pane, click follow this path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindows
   CurrentVersionExplorerAdvancedFolderHiddenSHOWALL (note: “+” sign on the left of a folder means that there are other folders inside it and to show those folders. click the “+” sign.
6. after you’ve followed the path, on the left pane, look for an entry that says “CheckedValue” and delete it.
7. if you cannot find CheckedValue, make sure that you are in the correct folder. You will know that by comparing the address on the bottom bar of the registry window with the path that we followed above.
8. after deleting CheckedValue, right click on the left pane of the registry and click “new”, then “DWORD value.”
9. rename the new item as CheckedValue (take note: NO SPACES)
10. double click on it and change the value to 1  then click ok (it should appear as 0×00000001 after you click “ok”)
11. close the registry window
12. go back to my tutorial on showing files and folders in hidden status and it should let you do it this time.

Hope this helps!