Hidden Folders cannot seemingly be un-hidden on C:Drive

[UncleTravlinAl]

Greetings,

I've just joined the forum, as I've had an issue with Hidden folders in Vista for some time now, which I believe is causing other programs (such as Picasa for my photos) to malfunction.

I scanned through most of the "Hidden folder" issues, and have not found a case that very closely matches mine.

I am not a whizz on computers, but have an idea of how to do basic bits and pieces in trouble-shooting. Here are a few of pieces of information regarding this, which hopefully will assist any expert who might kindly wish to lend a hand. Some may be irrelevant, but best to give too much than too little I guess:

1. When I navigate in Explorer to Computer > C > Users, my username does not appear in the list (even though I remember following the procedures to set up myself as an Admin on my chosen username, and I have no problem logging in as that user). All that appear are DEFAULT, GUEST and PUBLIC (even though I never use any of those user profiles).

2. I renamed what I believe was the "My Documents" directory to be "Uncle Travelling Al" at some point in the past. That is visible from the desktop, but most of the folders within that directory are Hidden (namely: Docuemnts, My Pictures, Music etc). In fact the only folders NOT hidden are AppData, Application Data and any new folders I've created recently while trying to work around this problem

3. For the Hidden folders, I cannot simply uncheck the HIDDEN checkbox, it is grayed out.

4. I looked up another forum and found that some viruses are often responsible for hiding folders on external drives and USBs - I found a solution that apparently works for other drives, and copied some data into the command line to try and run the fix I found - I got a message telling me I do not have access to run the same fix for the C: Drive.

5. As a result of the folders being hidden (at least this is the only reason I can deduce), my Picasa where I access most of my extensive photo collection from, continually just deletes all folders from the viewing gallery once they have spent hours loading up.

6. I have tried to copy all of my folders from my user profile onto an external hard drive as a back-up, but only the visible files have transferred, and the hidden ones are not copying across.

7. I took the step of creating a new "Pictures" folder, which is not hidden, and so displays all of my photos correctly in Picasa, but as "Pictures" is a preset folder in Vista, I have no idea what the consequences of me having done this are.

If there are any other pieces of information that might assist someone in helping me resolve this issue, please let me know.

Thanks for any help you can give - I scanned through most of the "Hidden folder" issues, and have not found a case that very closely matches mine.