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up vote 3 down vote favorite

I have windows 7 64 bit. I check the radio button Show hidden files, folder, and drives in the Folder Options. I then log out and log back in and it has been reset to Don't show hidden files, folder, or drives. This is very annoying any help would be greatly appreciated.

Note: this happens to all the windows 7 machines in our office that i know of.

Update:

I have run mbam and it didn't find anything wrong.

I misspoke in the my comment I am a programmer in our IT dept which is why i want hidden files turned on.

I have local admin on my machine and can run regedit

I do not have permissions to change the domain controller settings at all but my boss has told me if i find something promising he would make the changes

any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated

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Are you on a domain? – Tanner Jul 27 '12 at 20:55
@ r.tanner.f yes, I'm in the IT Dept but I'm not a programmer i won't have ready access to the domain controller – claybo.the.invincible Jul 27 '12 at 21:00
.. or all of them are infected by a trojan. I don't remember the name, but we had similar problems due to some auto-run type of trojan – stijn Jul 27 '12 at 21:01
Run MBAM to find out? If it's a virus then it's a whole different problem. – Tanner Jul 27 '12 at 21:24
What kind of privileges do you have? Can you run regedit? – Tanner Jul 27 '12 at 21:51
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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

As has been said in the comments this is caused by a GPO applied to the system.
To check this you would need to look at the machine that handles GP settings for your domain, usually the DC.
The setting you are looking for (Server 2008) is in:
User Configuration->Preferences->Control Panel Settings->Folder Options.
In that you can modify the settings for Folder options for Win Vista and later and XP machines seperately.

it's quite difficult to spot this setting as it doesn't seem to show up in RSOP on the machines I've checked but is showing up in GPResult.

Good luck getting your boss to spend the time looking for it. this is where good documentation / commenting comes in handy :-)

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up vote 0 down vote

To keep user setting on exit create the key NoSaveSettings REG_DWORD with a value of 0

in 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

This setting apply to the current user account. For the default user and system add the same key/value there:

HKEY_USERS\.Default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
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