Lock And Hide Folders In Windows 7, Vista, XP Using Secure Folder

For all those users who share their PC with others, privacy is a major concern. There are several freeware which let you hide and lock folders, password protect games and programs, hide drives in Windows Explorer. Here is yet another program to password protect and hide folders.

Secure Folder works with Windows 7, Vista, and XP and lets you lock and unlock folders from right click context menu, a feature not present in other folder locking programs.

Download and install Secure Folder (link at bottom). After installation completes, you are asked to set a one time password. Choose this password carefully, take the help of a password generator if you need.

Lock And Hide Folders From Right Click Context Menu

Now right click on any folder you want to secure, and select ‘[Lock/Unlock] with Secure Folder’. If prompted for UAC (User Account Control), then click Confirm.

You can choose to either simply lock the folder, or hide it along with locking.

Click ‘Lock’ and your folder will be securely locked. Note that it can be moved or deleted by other users of your Computer if it is not hidden, so you may very well want to hide it if you want to keep it completely secure.

Secure Folder Settings

You can open the program’s main interface from Start Menu. You will be asked to input the password first.

You can add a list of folders, and then lock or unlock them as per your requirement. If you don’t need the right click context menu item, then you can disable it from File –> Context Menu –> Remove [Lock/Unlock] with Secure Folder. You can change the current password from the File menu.

Unlock Protected Folders – How Effective Is Secure Folder

Now this part is really important. After all you are locking folders so that no one can access them. This is what we found in our tests on a Windows 7 machine.

Non-Admin users

When standard and guest account users try to access the folder, they are asked for the Admin password by UAC. In case UAC is turned off on your machine, then the behavior is same as for ‘Other Admin users’ given below.

Other Admin users

Other users who also have administrator accounts on your system are given the message ‘You don’t currently have permission to access to this folder’ when they double click on the folder.

Clicking Continue will give yet another message saying ‘You have been denied permission to access this folder’ and ‘To gain access to this folder you will need to use the security tab’. Clicking on the ‘security tab’ takes you to the folder’s file permissions tab.

Now when they try to change the file permissions to allow full access to that folder and click OK, they see a message saying that an unknown error occurred. This means you are safe with Secure Folder!

Important: When some one who logs into your account or gets PC access when you are logged in changes the file permissions, then it works! That means Secure Folder cannot protect you with password if any one logs in with the same account with which the folder was first locked.

Certainly a good program to protect folders, Secure Folder can be used to safely lock away your data when used with necessary precautions.

Download Secure Folder

Works with Windows 7, Vista, XP