Hide WoW Completely

[Sym]

So I saw a thread in "General", and thought instead of making a post that most people would miss, that I'd make a new topic in guides.

Link to original thread:
http://tinyurl.com/y5o4eg

Anyways...

So you want to hide WoW right? Don't want to let your Parents/Grandparents/Siblings/Girlfriend/Boyfriend that WoW is on their computer? Theres some easy steps that you can take to ensure this.

First of all, WoW can run from ANY part of your hard drive. This really isn't an issue, because you can drag and drop the "World of Warcraft" folder from your program files to anywhere else without messing up anything. So if the person you're hiding it from isn't very good with computers, simply moving the World of Warcraft folder from "Program Files" to somwhere deep within the "Windows" folder will solve your problem. Remember to remove all the shortcuts too. I'll go over later how to make a "False" shortcut.

Maybe the person you're up against is a little better then that. Maybe they know how to use the serch function.

To prevent against this, make sure the World of Warcraft folder is named something not so obvious. Name it "Microsoft Office" or "System Files", something that most people wouldn't want to mess with.

Simply renaming the folder won't prevent the search function from passing over the entire folder though. So once you have WoW placed in its final directory, right click the WoW.exe in the folder containing WoW, and click "Create Shortcut". The shortcut will be highlighted in blue. Click it, and drag it to your desktop. This shortcut is simply to remember were you hid the files. We'll need this later.

So while still in folder where WoW is, press the back button, or get back to the point where you can see the entire WoW folder, and are not inside it. Right click the folder, and select properties. There is an option at the bottom with a checkbox called "Hidden". Check it, and hit Apply, then Ok. You're not done yet, you need to make some adjustments.

Open up my computer, and go to Tools, Folder Options. Click the "View" tab. There will be a category called "Hidden Files and Folders" Click the radio button that says "Do not show hidden files and folders." Hit apply, and Ok. You're almost there.

Go to Start, then search. See the little puppy? He wants to exploit you and let your parents find your copy of WoW. We're not going to let him.

In the left pane with the evil puppy, theres an option called "Search all Files and Folders". Click it. Next, theres a pull down menu named "Advanced". Click it, and uncheck both "Search System Files" and "Search Hidden Files and Folders". These options will be saved for next time, don't worry.

Now they can't manually browse for WoW or find it with the search tool. There's still one more way they could see it, and we're about to fix it.

-We're about to be accessing system files here using the "Regedit" tool. If you follow my instructions and aren't a complete moron you'll be PERFECTLY fine. It's still really hard to mess up your computer doing this but anything is possible-

Go Start, then Run. In the Run box, type "Regedit" (without quotes). To do this, you need an adminastrator account, so if you don't, you better get access to one. If you need to find a way to get the password for all the accounts on your computer to to:
http://www.loginrecovery.com (It takes 2 days to get the passwords, unless you want to pay $20 for it to be instant)

Now you have regedit open. We will be working with in the right pane, with all the folders that start with HKEY_

This is where we seperate the men from the boys. Follow me and you'll be ok.

Click HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Click SOFTWARE
Click Microsoft
Click WIndows
Click CurrentVersion
Click Uninstall

In the dropdown list to the left you'll see a LOT of numbers. Scroll down untill you see stuff that looks like program names. Theres one called "World of Warcraft". Right click, and delete.

Viola, You're done. You have successfully made WoW on your computer hidden completely.

One problem...

How do you start it?
Well, do you see that icon we made in the beginning? Rename it to something that has nothing to do with WoW and hide it somewhere safe.

One of my favorite little tricks is this:
Right click on your shortcut. Theres a box named "Change Icon". Click it, and a list of possible icons comes up. Right in the middle theres a blank icon. Select it. Now, rename your folder to "`" Yes, thats `. its right next to your one key, and if you rename a folder to "`" without the quotes, its random chance that someone finds it. Put it in a folder that no one looks and drag it near the bottom. It looks like a spot on your screen to the untrained eye.

Or, you can be riskier and just to to Start, Run, then type WoW.exe. Just make sure to run something like regedit or msconfig after so the next person doesn't see WoW.exe.

Hope this Helps.

[Squirllz]

Good job +rep for you.

[thehacker]

well im happy u got the idea off of ME but thanks for completly answering my question

[benrules9]

wtf ur parents are gonna be pissed if u play Wow........

[miigu]

but on schools computer... How long does the wow install take?

[rudez]

Ok, i kinda dragged the icon to play wow into a folder, and its not in there.... HOW DO I FIND IT NOW!

[Cush]

One question - Why would you want to hide it from your parents if they are probably paying for it...

[rudez]

lol i gota pay 4 it

[1-800-stfu]

If you pay for it then they shouldnt really have any control over it. If your still with your parents that is... Too controlling these days!

[deadlook]

im not supposed to play wow my parents say im a addict :P so this is very usefull

[cosmo145]

best way to hide it is to not have it physically on your compuer at all. I have WoW installed on an old laptop hard drive and then put that HD in a external case. The case cost me $12, requires no power besides whats suplied by the usb.

[Sym]

best way to hide it is to not have it physically on your compuer at all. I have WoW installed on an old laptop hard drive and then put that HD in a external case. The case cost me $12, requires no power besides whats suplied by the usb.

Thats a good idea, but if you forget to unplug it you could be in trouble. With this method, theres really no way to screw yourself by forgetting something, unless you forget to close WoW.

Heh, at one point I had a paralell install of Windows XP on my computer. When I wanted to play WoW, I'd run a batch file to switch the boot.ini to contain information that would let you boot into that perticular partition, which had WoW installed.

I wrote this guide, because in the rare occurance that my laptop breaks, I can safely have WoW hidden on my mom's computer, and although she doesn't mind I play (I pay for it myself) she minds it taking up the space on her computer (apparently 150GB free space isn't enough).


Oh, and if you have any questions feel free to ask them here.

[RichyG]

The hidden shortcut thing doesnt work. Shortcuts have a little boxed arrow on the bottom left of the icon. So even if you have nothing for a shortcut icon, it still shows that boxed arrow which is very noticeable.

[twitch101]

holy **** dude 150 gigs is insane i will never be able to fill and im an avid emule/torent user

[Macroman]

Nice...lol installing WoW at school