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Windows 7 Has Lots of "God Modes"

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-am-god-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Those intrigued by the 'GodMode' in Windows 7 may be interested to know that there are many other similar shortcuts hidden within the operating system — some going back to Vista or before. Steven Sinofsky, Windows division president, said several similar undocumented features provide direct access to all kinds of settings, from choosing a location to managing power settings to identifying biometric sensors." Update: 01/07 23:46 GMT by CT : Link updated to source.

14 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Direct Copy article by furby076 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1) The article is a copy/paste of the cnet article (kind of a fail for aviran's place).
    2) More importantly, from the article, I inferred these god mode settings were just (basically) command lines to initiate control panel activities? Not a big deal if that is the case. It is shortcuts of a way I guess. Or is there something more to this?

    --

    I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
  2. Re:Those strings can't be right by EvilRemix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is only one God mode and it is IDDQD.

    --
    "It's mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality."
  3. I don't get it.... by cptdondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If all of the features are in the Control Panel, why do the developers need shortcuts?

    In other words, what's wrong with the Control Panel interface that hinders developers to the point where they have to hack in these types of kludges?

    And, yes, I consider a directory with a "special string" a horrible kludge. Think of all the behind-the-scenes complications that this brings on. Every directory creation/access has to be checked for these modes. How does a godmode directory interact with a random app?

    The mind reels.

    1. Re:I don't get it.... by ceoyoyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "In other words, what's wrong with the Control Panel interface that hinders developers to the point where they have to hack in these types of kludges?"

      You don't use Windows, hey?

      My thought when I read the article was similar. If your developers are making themselves obscure shortcuts, you might want to have your UI team rethink their design.

    2. Re:I don't get it.... by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      well that's why they're developers, not users. Your developers need to see stuff in the OS on a more regular basis than the average user. Finding connected hardware ID strings, even as a guy getting a PhD in computer science isn't exactly top of my priority list. If you look at the godmode everyone was playing with it's not exactly insightful. It's just a list, sorted alphabetically by type of task, of menus. Useful if you're changing stuff for the sake of changing stuff (say the first time you set up your computer or if you're testing), but there's no obvious logical connection between my folder display settings, my windows defender settings and my 'location and other sensors' options. It's handy to have if you want to see a list of a lot of stuff you can do, but not really very functional.

      If anything they don't really belong together unless you're doing stuff with the operating system that is very different than your average user, like say, trying to test the functionality of all this stuff, in order.

      Admittedly control panel isn't a great implementation, I think MS is still grappling with which direction to take your system settings, either the sort of godmode exhaustive list, which IMO is far too confusing for the average user (albeit alphabetical at least), and the task dependent options where you only see your folders settings options if you're messing with folders, mouse settings with mouse software etc. In the end they've settled on an ugly hybrid of the two, but I think that covers all bases better than the alternatives.

    3. Re:I don't get it.... by recoiledsnake · · Score: 1, Insightful

      If your developers are making themselves obscure shortcuts, you might want to have your UI team rethink their design.

      Unfortunately, it seems they do, since with every "upgrade" of their OS and apps you have to relearn the thing all over again. More unfortunately, they're just not very good at UI or they wouldn't have to.

      People bitch that's it not good and when it's made better(like in Vista/7), (same or different) people bitch that it's too different from Windows 95. It's like they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Same with the Office Ribbon, Vista cleaned up a lot of underlying bits, like graphics, printer and network subsystems but companies like Nvidia, ATI, HP and Cisco dropped the ball on Graphic, Printer and VPN drivers and MS got the shaft for that one resulting in people like you putting 'upgrade' in double quotes.

      --
      This space for rent.
    4. Re:I don't get it.... by jonadab · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > what's wrong with the Control Panel interface that hinders developers

      You mean besides the fact that it's been completely rearranged and the various bits renamed and specific settings moved from place to place so many times nobody can find anything?

      It took me three minutes playing around in the Windows Seven control panel just to figure out how to change the TCP/IP settings. They're in a different place from Vista, where they were in a different place from XP, which in turn put them in a different place from both 98 and 2000. Almost every setting in the control panel has been moved around like that, and some of them have seen worse, being moved into places where you can only get to them through "Advanced Settings" menu items and/or links in sidebars that don't even show at all if you have Windows Explorer set to classic folders.

      I can definitely see how the developers could become frustrated with it, especially if they were working on a not-yet-released future version at work while still using an actually released version elsewhere (say, at home, or on the laptop). The inconsistency could be maddening.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    5. Re:I don't get it.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      How hard can it be to create a controlpanel with multiple view modes. Most modern file system explorers these days have modes like list, compact, details etc. Why can't the controlpanel have a little button in a corner that switches between categorical, hierarchical and alphabetical views. Just having a comprehensive list of all options would help a lot when you are configuring and tweaking your system for the first time after a new install.

  4. does not compute by shadowrat · · Score: 1, Insightful

    it's intended to be used by developers as a shortcut, but it's undocumented. How does hiding a feature from a developer make things easy on the developer?

  5. Re:Undocumented features! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This is REALLY old news. I've been using folders with the CLSID appended for well over a decade.

  6. plagiarist by LordSkout · · Score: 2, Insightful

    /. should probably change the link to this to the original author, Ina Fried at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10426627-56.html?tag=mncol

    Aviran's plagiarism shouldn't benefit from slashdotting.

  7. Re:Unfortunately... by recoiledsnake · · Score: 4, Insightful

    God bless their souls. I would want Grandma to be atleast 3 clicks away from the desktop from settings such as "Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions". Me? I just put the folder on the desktop as a easy way to tweak my gaming desktop.

    --
    This space for rent.
  8. Re:Undocumented features! by Tetsujin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And all the stupid posts like the GP are simply anti-M$ zealots that are just trying to get karma points. (Seeing how it is at +4 insightful right now shows how successful they are at gaming the moderator system).

    Oh, wah, popular sentiments get modded up! I'm gonna tell!

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.
  9. Re:Direct Copy article... i.e. PLAGIARISM by macraig · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's imaginary property, and then there's ethics and general courtesy. The former is not a prerequisite for the latter... or at least it damned well shouldn't be.