God mode. A term usually reserved for games of all shapes and sizes, with the coolest being Rise Of The Triad‘s god mode, it has now found its way to the world of operating systems. Someone has discovered that Windows 7 has a god mode – but it’s not what you think it is.
I’ve been searching my bum off trying to find the origin of the story, and as far as I can tell, Carsten Knobloch is the first to make a mention of this way back on December 12, 2009. For some arbitrary reason, it only started exploding all over the web the past few days.
Basically, god mode creates a folder which contains all the various search results strings (if that makes any sense) that pop up when you search using the search field in the Control Panel. These strings are used to make it more “natural” to search for settings in Windows (try it).
Enabling god mode is quite easy:
- Create a new folder
- Name it:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}- That’s it
This creates a folder which more or less gives you categorised access to each and every setting in Windows – at least, each and every setting that is accessible as a search string – 265 settings in 50 sections. This could be handy if you’re setting up a machine for the first time and need to access many settings.
An important note needs to be made about Windows Vista. While this trick is safe for all versions of Windows 7 (both 32bit and 64bit), the situation for Vista is different. Windows Vista 32bit users can use this trick, but Vista 64bit users can not. It will cause your system to enter an Explorer crash loop. If this happens to you, boot into a Safe mode command prompt, navigate to the god mode’s parent folder, and execute rd /s God[Tab].
You can change the “GodMode” part of the folder name to anything else, and it still works, except the title of the special folder is changed.
….kicked ass!!! I loved that game.
dipstick
chojin
\ekg
When I read that title my brain tried to access some restricted memory, but the memory sat much too deep. (Probably as a safety precaution.)
Searching Google for the screenshots the memories came back,… that game was incredibly bizarre and fun.
Good times, thanks Thom.
Some quick googling and I found a reference from october 2008: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=681126
Who came up with this term?
I can’t see anything “GodMode” about it – it’s just a special Virtual Shell Folder… read up on the windows shell namespace
It’s a fairly common term (or at least was) in gaming.
I remember it being used frequently in FPSs like Doom where by entering a cheat code would render you invincible to enemy attack (hence the “God” bit).
I agree with you that it’s a highly inappropriate term for this usage and that there’s nothing new, unusual nor “god” like about virtual shell folders (I remember using them on Windows 95 at college as a way of hiding naughty files from network admins that feared the command line)
This has been a feature since Win95. Random name.{guid of shell namespace provider} will give you a folder with that namespace. There are many such providers in the system. For example, you could create “Bin.{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}”, which is a new recycle bin.
Thanks for the info, very useful to know.
For others, the NameSpace folder is located in Registry at HLKM\Softwares\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\NameSpa ce.
Edited 2010-01-05 02:50 UTC
More like about:config.
It’s a game! Windows is just a game!! (c) Merovingian 😉
I knew it, Windows is just for games, it’s not for serious business
I agree with that. No stability, just games!
For real work (aka top500 and some labs), use Linux
Yup, because 99% of computing is done in top 500 and labs!
Oh wait … you’re an idiot.
I’m not an idiot, and you should shut your mouth if you’re a real man.
We’re talking about stability in computing… And sorry, windows is a no go here.
Hehe, I’ll have to correct you here, Doom had a god mode, but Rise of the Triad had a dog mode…
Rehdon
It’s more like the powertools MS made available for older versions of windows.
How to make a Fatality …
So you can finally have on Windows something like /etc on Unix? Cool.
Ignoring, for one moment, the fact that you’re trolling: this behaves *nothing* like /etc
1/ you can’t add / remove items from the shell folder like you would with normal windows/*nix folders
2/ it is useless in the command line beyond hiding files from users who can’t use the command line
3/ because of #2, you can’t write scripts to change the settings via the virtual shell folders (though many/most of the settings should be scriptable directly).
If you want to draw comparisons between this and *nix, then this is more like an application short cut to a GTK+/QT GUI with system settings than a symlink to a folder.
Ummm… i think he was joking
Okay, next time I’ll try to be funny I’ll remeber to include a bold disclaimer, so that nobody feels offended. Anyway, thanks for the explanation.
I wasn’t offended (I don’t even like Windows).
The problem with trolls are they use “humour” to convey their point. So it’s sometimes hard to tell those that are genuinely being humorous and friendly from those that are trying to provoke a reaction.
On this instance, I misjudged the post
Laurence: you are the one who needs to stop TROLLING, you p.o.s troll. Worthless ignorant annoying morons like you are the reason that I stopped posting on any internet forums for several years. Discussions on the internet always end with someone calling someone else a nazi, troll or anti-semite. Anyone who says or does something someone else does not like, is accused of trolling. This ugly habit is getting extremely annoying and is making internet forums unbearable. There is no freedom of speech or opinion on the interwebz. If someone does not like the color of your shirt, you are instantly labeled a troll.
Laurence = troll
Excuse me?
I’ve already appolagised for misjudging the post and even when I incorrectly assumed the original comment to be trolling I still replied in an informative, unbiased and mature fasion.
Thus so far the ONLY person here that’s been arsy is yourself.
The irony is, if you’ve ever followed my posts, then you’d realise that I’ve tried to remain as unbiased as possible (defending any one or product that I felt was unfairly / inaccurately criticized even if I can’t stand said corporation / product myself).
So you’re now doing exactly what you’ve kicked off about hating about Internet discussions.
….in fact, I don’t know why I even bothering with you in this stupid off topic arguement
Or p.o.s. troll.
Oh no, another back-door into Windows?
Whereas I usually enjoyed the hidden pearls such as credits and/or photos of the developers and other cuties, these were usually entered via specific key strokes on a keyboard.
I don’t desire to sound paranoid yet I wonder how much this one is exploitable as a back-door into the core of Windows 7?
Any access to system settings – especially just via the creation of a folder with a specific name such as in this case – could potentially be exploited for not-so-nice purposes by any application (local or remote) which can create this folder.
I’m not a deep explorer of operating system features or security weaknesses, yet there are two questions lingering in my mind:
-Are there other similarly defined folders giving even more access to the system settings?
-Is this something which is part of “MinWin” and will remain forever in all derivatives of Windows 7?
Any other I miss?
This UI allows you to change settings that your logged on user credentials give you access to change. No elevation of privilege here. Anything you can do here you can do directly (eg. regedit et al.)
Possibly, but you’d still need to have permission to do anything with them. OS security is not defined by explorer-level dialogs. It’s defined by permissions on files and registry entries.
MinWin doesn’t include a GUI, or explorer, or any shell namespace functionality. So no, MinWin does not contain anything close to this.
AFAIR, this is access to a shell namespace, handy if you’re about to configure a brand new machine – you get all the weapons in one click. Happy new year.