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Windows 7 Has Lots of "God Modes"
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.
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
There is only one God mode and it is IDDQD.
"It's mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality."
What to find all these God Modes? Just go to your registry and navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID and search for "System.ApplicationName". Every GUID listed under CLSID with a System.ApplicationName entry can be used to do this same thing.
While you are at it, delete the key.
There. That should help.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10426627-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Identical to the summary link, except from the actual source.
Using that will doom you :)
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.
The "God Mode" is just a different view for the many things available in the control panel.
There is such a thing as overdocumenting your software, this is rather an easter egg that happens to be very handy.
Ummm... What do you mean by "undocumented"? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee330741(VS.85).aspx All these stupid articles are simply fanboys trying to get clicks on their sites. This is old news. Move along.
I guess Slashdot is now advocating outright plagiarism by giving it the eyeballs instead of what it rips-off? Do I get three guesses who the "anonymous reader" was that submitted the summary text?
"On the eighth day god created turok" without vowels. Not that hard to remember.
$ make love
make: don't know how to make love. Stop
Firstly, it's just a trick involving the GUID that points to a shell folder - all of which is documented on MSDN. Ed Bott also concurs in his blog post.
Secondly, Vista had this too although it was then called "Master Control". Same thing so it's not exactly new.
Thirdly, it's doesn't offer you anything more than you would normally find in the Control Panel. Yes, it is all in one place but I can't be the only one that just types a couple of letters into the Start Menu to find the option I want.
Fourthly, the list of them are as follows:
Enjoy.
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Noah's already experienced it but God gave us a new colorful interface element and promised it'll never happen again.
Only if you're playing Heretic.
How about a mode where I can hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and hit Enter, and have it lock my screen, without having to wait in the middle for Windows to mode-switch to a different video screen, complete with fancy graphics, to ask me the same thing a simple dialog box asks me?
Windows-L.
How about being able to edit the parameters of something you've "pinned to the taskbar"?
Right click the icon. The top item in the popup list is a shortcut, so you can right click and select 'properties' (like any shortcut) and modify the parameters.
Whats up with this whole "Library" thing? What is wrong with "My Documents"
Library may refer to multiple folder locations. Got music in two separate locations (like a portable drive a local one)? Now it's all accessible from one place.
Thank God at least they put your whole user profile in the c:\users\ directory - wait, do they, or is user crap still sprinkled around in c:\program files\blah
All of the microsoft stuff is there, but I suppose there's nothing stopping a program from not using it (UAC perhaps would complain about an app trying to create files in Program Files).
The author stole his text from a CNET article by Ina Fried. Update the link to point to the original article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10426627-56.html
Covered it exactly. TFA is just plagiarized from cnet.
I think the user experience design meeting at MS must have gone something like this...
"Listen, we've developed this feature that lets users manage their systems very conveniently. Access to everything from one place."
"Wow, that does look good. All in favor of hiding it?"
(all, in unison) "Aye!"
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.