HOWTO Enable “God Mode” in Windows 7
This past weekend, I “upgraded” my Lenovo Thinkpad x61s laptop from XP Professional to Windows 7 Ultimate, in preparation for some new gadgets I’m planning on testing with it.
Anyone who knows me well enough, knows I’m definitely NOT a Windows fan, but I do have to use it for some of my proprietary peripherals, my hybrid GTD system, and for my day job. Everywhere else, I use Linux. This is the reason I carry two laptops with me when I travel: One running my favorite flavor of Linux + VMware Workstation for “regular” Windows work, and the ultra-portable for running “real” Windows for cases where a virtualized Windows instance just won’t work.
A lot has changed in Windows 7 from what I’m used to with Windows XP, and there are a lot of annoying quirks, but I’m trying to stick with it, and keep it installed, so I can use the 12″ notebook as my “primary” on-the-go machine for the short term, until my second Lenovo T61p shows up to replace my current one.
Because there are a lot of changed settings, and everything is buried everywhere on Windows 7, in a seemingly illogical fashion, I had to find a way to get to it all.
Windows lacks a lot of power, customization and flexibility that Linux has had for a decade, so I continue to use and support Linux. But there are ways to eek out some power in Windows, and in Windows 7 I found such an option, and it’s called “God Mode”. Here’s how you activate it:
- Right-click anywhere in a folder or on the desktop, and choose New -> Folder, as shown here:
- Name the folder “
"<anything-you-want>.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}“. I called my “Admin Options“, but you can call yours whatever you wish. Note the curly braces are significant. They must appear in the directory itself. It might be easier do to this from the commandline, and that looks like this (click images below for full-size versions):
- When you hit Enter, you’ll notice that the curly braces and their contents disappear, leaving you with only the “
<anything-you-want>” part remaining. - When you open this folder, you will find a treasure trove of useful options and applications to run to help tweak, administer and manage your Windows 7 machine. In my case, there were 286 items (seen here, click to expand to full-size), many of which are not in any applet, control panel or menu in the standard OS itself.
