How to Password Protect a Folder in Windows 7

You store very personal or confidential files in your computer and you do not want others , may be including your family members to share those files. You can hide those files using “Do Not Show Hidden Files” in the ‘Folder Option” yet this is not secure enough to completely hide your files because at any times they can be unhidden and accessed. They are a lot of folder lock applications that can completely password protect and hide folders including their files but they’re mostly paid software. In this post we will be dealing with trick on how to password protect a folder in Windows 7.


Windows 7 already has a basic hidden feature to lock and password protect a file or a folder, so that if you don’t want to spend few bucks to buy paid protect password folder applications you can use the following trick.



Create a new folder in your computer, rename it with whatever name, supposed you want to rename the folder as “My Folder”. Now open the folder right click inside the newly created folder and click new to create a new text document. Copy paste the following lines into the document and save as locker bat.



Quote:
Quote: cls
@ECHO OFF
title Folder Private
if EXIST “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” goto UNLOCK
if NOT EXIST Private goto MDLOCKER
:CONFIRM
echo Are you sure you want to lock the folder(Y/N)
set/p “cho=>”
if %cho%==Y goto LOCK
if %cho%==y goto LOCK
if %cho%==n goto END
if %cho%==N goto END
echo Invalid choice.
goto CONFIRM
:LOCK
ren Private “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
attrib +h +s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
echo Folder locked
goto End
:UNLOCK
echo Enter password to unlock folder
set/p “pass=>”
if NOT %pass%== password here goto FAIL
attrib -h -s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
ren “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” Private
echo Folder Unlocked successfully
goto End
:FAIL
echo Invalid password
goto end
:MDLOCKER
md Private
echo Private created successfully
goto End
:End



Don’t forget to save it as all files (see the following picture) :

Once the code is copied code locate the following word : password here (highlighted above in blue color ), replace it with a password with which you wish to password protect your folder.
“My Folder” folder now wil consist of two files namely lock.bat and text document . Double-click on the file lock.bat, this will create a new file name “Private” as seen in the following picture:

Move all your personal or classified folders into the “Private” folder
To lock and at the same time hide/ passsword protect the private folderdouble click the lock.bat file. You will then be prompten with a command to lock (lock folder) or not. Y / N?
Type Y (on keyboard) and then enter, then the private folder will be hidden / disappear
If you want to access the hidden and password-protected private folder just click on the file lock file, then enter the password that you created earlier and hit Enter, private folder will appear and can be accessed again.