However, if you want to see everything, just download and run
UNHIDE.EXE as in:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html
It was originally written to help recover from malware that hides file
and directories making the machine unusable. Since there was no way
to know what needed to be unhidden to recover, the program unhides
everything. Have fun, and let me know when you accidentally trash or
edit something important.

Great! Thanks.

I insist on organizing the drives the way //I// wish to. My new machine has a
256GB SSD, plus a 2TB HDD RAID 5 array. I tried to reserve the SSD for the OS
(and related software). I put as much software and data as I could on the HDD.
Fortunately, Microsoft lets you move IE and mail files anywhere you want, so I
moved them to the HDD. Thus, the system isn't constantly writing them to and
erasing them from the "fragile" SSD.


Incidentally, I come from a Unix background, where one does as little
as possible as root (superuser). All work is done as an ordinary
user. If a system file needs to be run, edited, erased, or moved, the
user gets a temporary elevation in privledges using the su or sudo
commands. This is not to isolate users, or protect user information.
It's to keep the owner of the machine from accidentally trashing it.
The same philosophy is slowly working its way into Windoze, in the
form of "Run as Administrator". If you can't see every file and every
directory, it's for your own good. I've had the OS catch me before
making a major screwup more times than I care to admit.

I have no objection to this in Windows, either, as it reduces the chance of
malware installing something nasty. However... there are certain "virtual"
directories I can't look in. I don't like this.