Windows 7 GodModes

A friend of mine sent me a message yesterday asking me to create a folder on my Windows 7 desktop and name it "GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}" without the quotes of course.

Now being the skeptic that I am I delayed and then he proceeded to tell me that its not going to mess my system up, knowing that he is not the type to do that I took a chance :). To my surprise it really was a GodMode with lots of undocumented features.

Quote from CNET news in repose to this feature "Intended for developers as a shortcut to various internal settings,such features have been around since Vista and even before, according to the head of Microsoft's Windows division, who tells CNET that theso-called GodMode settings folder uncovered by bloggers is just one ofmany undocumented developer features included in Windows.

To make it work, create a new folder with any name, then a period, then one of the text strings below, example test.{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33} will give you the following

Additional strings to test with:

{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}
{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428}
{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}
{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9}
{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70}
{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4}
{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966}
{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43}
{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87}
{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}
{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B}
{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423}
{62D8ED13-C9D0-4CE8-A914-47DD628FB1B0}
{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC}

And, as a reminder, to create the Godmode folder itself, use this string:

{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Screen shot of a protion of the GodMode admin interface:

I started testing a few options and the first one that I can see myself using on a daily basis is the "Record steps to reproduce a problem". This little screen capture program can also be called from the command prompt by typing PSR, this can be very useful when troubleshooting an issue, or for documentation.

I have tested this on Windows Server 2008 and it works but apprently this feature is not supported in on Windows 2003.