Hi, sorry for the dumb post, but I have been using 98SE since it came out and it has always warned me to stay out of the C:\WINDOWS files before I click into them. I have just done two new drive setups, started by cloning off my master drive (that has 98SE and all apps, IU never use it for computing, just as a copy master), and both don't warn me out of there, I can just click into it like My Documents or anything else.

I noticed this after the first drive was just horrendously crash prone, even doing BSOD on opening Wordpad, and telling me that I don't have enough RAM for something silly like opening My Documents.

These are things I was tempted to blame on Firefox and Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (the master was and is 2.0.0.12, I upgraded this copy to 2.0.0.14), but then I noticed that it wasn't warning me to stay out of the Windows files as usual.

Why is this? How can I set it back to normal? Any thoughts on why this was happening?

To "set protection" on the Windows directory, open either My Computer or Windows Explorer. On the menu bar, click on Tools, Folder Options, or View, Folder Options. Click on the VIEW tab.

Scroll down to Files and Folders, Hidden Files and Folders. Set the parameters to NOT show hidden files and folders, and to HIDE protected operating system files.

Thanks for the reply on this. My computer isn't right. I went in there like you said and it was already set to "Do not show hidden or system files". Just to try, I unchecked it, restarted, then rechecked it, it still lets me into Windows without a warning. This is what it looks like on my 98SE:
http://www.fairlightcmi.com/folder-options.jpg

How can I fix this? I never changed anything so this is making me suspicious that something is broken or hacked.