How do you make a file not a system file in Win XP? Somebody has to know an easier way...Experts??

[Joe2683]

I recently had a virus and I fixed it but many of the files were made system files, how do I make them reguler files again because when they are system files they are hidden and will not unhide....Please Help!!

 

[bsobel]

Easiest way (to me) is from does use the attrib command to change settings as in:

attrib -s filename.ext

If the file is hidden also use:

attrib -s -h filename.ext

Bill

 

[Joe2683]

Thats cool and all but man I have to do that to 500 mp3s. There has got to be an easier way...anybody?

 

[corkyg]

Download a copy of ZTree Win. It works in 98, SE, ME and XP. You can gang tag entire folders of files and gang change the attributes of same.

You can also do it in Explorer by highlighting multiple files, and right clicking to get their collective properties. Change them all to READ ONLY and then change them back again by unchecking READ ONLY.

And, you can do a global from the command prompt with attrib *.* -r-a-s-h

 

[Joe2683]

Man this ztree program is confusing, I can't understand how to use it. I think you have to tag every file individually which if that is correct I am gonna be tagging for days since I don't have every file memorized and I have all my files in different folders. There has got to be an easier way...PLEASE!

 

[corkyg]

ZTree inherits all the keystrokes of XTree . . . a file management mainstay since 1985.

What makes it great is the ability to TAG multiple files or ALL files at once. This is done by Ctrl T as the keystroke. Ctrl U is global untag. Ctrl C is global copy. Ctrl M is global Move. It is all extremely intuitive if you have ever worked in DOS.

 

[JayBone]

500 files? If they're all in the same directory, just navigate there with the command line and type:
attrib -s -h *.mp3
If they're al in different directories, but contained lower down in a common folder, say c:\mp3\old and c:\mp3\new, go to the higher directory (c:\mp3) and type:
attrib -s -h *.mp3 /s
The /s makes it go through all of the subdirectories, in addition to the current one.

Of course, this is based on win2k, since I don't have XP. :\

 

[Cuular]

Or a person could create a dos .bat file by doing a:
dir/s *.mp3 >out to junk.bat
Then editing that file and inserting the appropiate attrib command at the beginning of each line.
Using VI since you can get versions of it for all OS's the following command would put attrib -a-s-h-r at the beginning of each line in the file:

:g/^/s//attrib -a-s-h-r /g

That says :g vi for global

/^/ the part that says at the beginning of the line

s says substitute

//attrib -a-s-h-r / sayd put attrib... at the beginning of the line

the final g says to do this for every line in the file.


In the end you would have junk.bat with the commands for attribing all the *.mp3 files that the dir /s returned.

I am sure there are about 10,000 different editors and ways to do this, but the above example will work for vi.