"Play God" with Windows 7

[pitzerwm]

From a newsletter that I get.


If you play video games, you're probably familiar with the term "God Mode," which is a cheat that keeps your character alive forever. You might also have heard about something called "God Mode" in Windows 7, but it sounds a little intimidating, conjuring up visions of sci-fi movies in which the computer takes over the world. Well, it's really not quite as powerful as the name makes it sound, but this hidden feature that's tucked away under the hood in Windows 7 can be a useful tool for those who would like to have a single centralized place where you can access most of the system's control settings - a sort of a mega-management console. If you're tired to clicking from one control panel applet to another or having to go to different management interfaces to change several settings, you'll like God Mode.

You won't find the option to enable it anywhere in the graphical interface, but getting into God Mode is pretty simple, once you know the trick. Here's what you do: Create a few folder (it doesn't matter where it's located - you can put it on the desktop or within another folder somewhere). Then right click it, click Rename and name it exactly as follows (the easiest way is to cut and paste the text into the folder name field):
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

These are the instructions you'll find all over the web, but here's a secret: The text at the beginning ("GodMode") can be anything you want - it's the Globally Unique Identifier (GUID), which consists of that long string of alpha and numeric characters that really matters.

Once you rename it, as if by magic, the folder's icon will change to look like a blue dashboard screen. Double click on it to open it up, and you'll see a plethora of items representing the different control tools that you normally have to go to different menu items to access: Action Center items, Administrative Tools, AutoPlay settings, Backup and Restore, BitLocker settings, Color Management, Credential Management, Date and Time settings, Default Programs, Desktop Gadgets settings, Device Manager, Devices and Printers, Display Settings - and that's just A through D. There are lots more - 270 items in all.

 

[pitzerwm]

Continued

Note that there's nothing really new here - all these task items are available within the different control panel applets - but they're nicely organized and you might find it easier to find what you're looking for by taking the "big picture" view. Another nice thing is that you can sort or group the task items by name, application, keyword, etc. - just as you can do with any folder in Explorer. Just click the View menu and scroll down to "Sort by" or "Group by."

This works in both Windows 7 and Vista; however, be careful if you're using a 64 bit version of Vista. Some have reported that God Made causes it to crash. If that happens to you, the solution is to boot into Safe Mode and delete the folder; then your system should start and run normally. In my experience, it works with no problems in both 32 bit and 4 bit Windows 7.

Creating a folder on the desktop is handy because you can come back to it and double click it anytime you want, but you don't have to create a folder to access the list of task items. If you prefer, you can get to it by typing the following command in the Run box:
shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

And as a bonus, this article shows you sixteen more similar shortcuts for directly accessing various settings:
Read More Here

 

[thoffmanjr]

I did not know that. Very cool. Thanks for sharing.