I was just having some fun on my Windows Vista computer by making folders on my desktop with "invisible" names. I made the "invisible" names by entering an empty space on the name line. Not a usual space, I entered alt(hold) 0160. Then I made the whole folder invisible by changing the icon of the folder to no icon at all. Well, it was kind of fun since I figured it out myself, but when I didn't want to keep them anymore and I tried to delete them, nothing happened. I marked them all and pressed delete but they just blinked one time and remained untouched. I couldn't change name on them, delete them, move them elsewhere than somewhere on the desktop-space or change their icons. Has anyone else than I encountered this bug? Or does anyone at least have any idea of what to do to get rid of them?
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
Drop to a command prompt (Windows+R "cmd").
Set the current directory to your desktop (cd %homepath%\desktop)
Now, rename all of these "invisible" directories by prepending "killme" onto the name. (This will work from the command prompt, even if the desktop won't let you do it from the GUI.
for /d %d in ("_*") do ren "%d" "killme%d"
The "_" within the parentheses represents alt+0160. Don't type an underscore. Rather, within the parentheses are: quote, alt+0160, asterisk, quote. Don't forget any of the quotes!
This will rename all the folders to "killme" followed by the invisible characters. Note that, if you make a typo within the parentheses, some of your non-invisible desktop folders may be renamed to start with "killme" as well. Simply rename these back manually.
You will now be able to access, and delete the "killme" folders.