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I've encountered a weird kind of issue in Windows 10:

In a mapped drive, there are a bunch of system folders (16 to be exact). I have projects in a couple folders; one of them called, say Folder A. The problem with this is the system folders all begin with . and so they sort first alphabetically, and I always have show hidden files enabled for various reasons. The best I could do was start the folders with underscores so that they would not appear even further beneath the hidden folders than they needed to.

It occurred to me today I might try adding a dot in front of the underscore to bring these folders up to the top, which can be handy in Open Dialogs where scrolling is otherwise required to get to them. When I did this, Windows 10 automatically hid the folder. I could still see it, but the folder icon was lighter as it is for hidden folders. I went to Properties and the Hidden checkbox was checked. I unchecked and closed out. The folder was still hidden. I went back to Properties and it was as if I had never been there.

Is this a bug in Windows 10 or desired behavior? How can I unhide the folders? It's not the end of the world, because I see them, but I don't want them to be hidden. Does Windows force folders beginning with . to be hidden?

For what it's worth, I tried doing this on my main PC, running Windows XP SP3. I run into a different problem, because I can create a folder beginning with an underscore, and even add a . in the middle, but if I try adding a . to the beginning of the folder name, Windows XP just gets mad and basically says that's not a valid rename. So it seems the ability to do this is new to newer versions of Windows.

That being said, I can see the folders in the same drive in Windows XP (the ones beginning with a .). I tried unhiding the folders I created, and I was not able to do this in Windows XP, either.

What is causing the issue here? Windows? The file server? And how can I rename the folders such that they show up at the top but are not hidden?

InterLinked
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    Yoy may learn some reading this other question: https://superuser.com/questions/364406/hiding-files-folders-which-begin-with-a-full-stop-period – music2myear Oct 23 '19 at 02:07
  • "Does Windows force folders beginning with . to be hidden?" No. I can't reproduce this bug. Creating folders starting with a `.` works fine for me. What version of Windows 10 do you have? 1903? Take the mapped drive out of the equation for a moment. What happens if you create `.test` on your desktop? The issue may only happen with files on the network drive. See if you can narrow it down by testing locally. – Mr Ethernet Oct 23 '19 at 02:50
  • What's the host of this mapped drive? – Bob Oct 23 '19 at 02:52
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    We have actually used this behaviour in my place. We did folder redirection on the user Desktop folder to their network folder and the folders on the mapped drives are .Desktop (which automatically get hidden by the Linux host). Not sure if this is a bug or a feature. – Darius Oct 23 '19 at 04:26
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    @Darius That's why I asked what the host is. If it's a Linux host (e.g. via Samba), that would be "expected" behaviour - but configurable; there's a `hide dot files` option in the Samba conf. – Bob Oct 23 '19 at 06:59
  • Anyway to be certain from the network drive properties? It seems like probably some kind of Linux host, just my best guess based on the lack of options and menus that appear in Properties. Usually there are more when it's a WS. – InterLinked Oct 24 '19 at 11:10
  • @InterLinked Depending on the level of access you have, you can check for an administrative share (e.g. `c$`). Or you can run nmap against the host, and depending on what firewalls are in place it can usually tell between Linux and Windows hosts. By default, SMB (and Samba) also report the server OS, see the answer here: https://serverfault.com/questions/570461/detect-if-remote-host-is-running-windows-or-samba – Bob Oct 29 '19 at 04:31
  • @Bob Can you run nmap from Windows? That appears to be focused on Linux clients. I thought it was Linux, but when I try navigating to \\server\c$, I get access denied and then prompted for credentials (and no, I should not have access to c$, since this is a file server). So maybe it is running WS, then... – InterLinked Oct 29 '19 at 12:43
  • https://nmap.org/book/inst-windows.html https://nmap.org/download.html – Bob Oct 29 '19 at 12:45
  • @Bob I'm not a local administrator on this PC, but thanks anyways – InterLinked Oct 29 '19 at 12:46

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For me the correct solution was to add

hide dot files = no

in smb.conf

Ondrej Varoscak
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