Truth Behind Hidden Secret “God Mode” (aka Master Control Panel) Found in Windows 7 and Later

UPDATE: This so called “God Mode” can also be created in Windows 8 and later.

So everyone is talking about the new “God Mode” found in Windows 7 and later. Is it really a new feature? Is it really a hidden secret thing? Lets understand it with the help of a very simple story.

2 persons are discussing about “GodMode“:

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Person 1: Did you know Windows 7 and later contain a hidden secret “God Mode”?

Person 2: (Surprised…) Really? I didn’t. Can you please let me know how to access it?

Person 1: Sure. Just create a new folder anywhere in Windows. You can create it on Desktop or within Windows Explorer and give it following name:

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

Voilla. Now you’ll have access to all Control Panel settings page in a single place as shown in following screenshot:

Windows_7_Gode_Mode.png

Person 2: (Excited…) Wow. Amazing. Its too cool. But hey! I tried to use my name instead of “God Mode” while renaming the folder and its still working. So what’s so special about giving it name “God Mode”?

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Person 1: (Confused and looking at the front wall…) Hmmm. Guess what, you are right. I checked and it works for any string but the code given after the decimal point is must and should not be changed.

Person 2: Yeah. So “God Mode” has nothing to do with this special Control Panel page. I investigated and found that actually this page is called “All Tasks” and you can get more information about it from Windows Registry.

Type regedit in RUN or Start Menu Searchbox and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor. Now go to following key:

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

Or press “Ctrl+F” in Registry Editor and search for {ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} string. It’ll open the same key for you.

Now you can see, this key have “All Tasks” as default value.

Windows_7_Gode_Mode_in_Registry.png

Person 1: True mate.

Person 2: Actually this special “All Tasks” page is neither any Easter egg nor any hidden secret thing. It was developed by Windows developers to show search results. Whenever you search for any term in control panel window, the “All Tasks” page is searched for the term and if any search result is found, its shown to the user.

In fact, there is no need to create a new folder to access it. You can directly access it using following command in RUN or Windows Explorer addressbar:

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

You can also create a shortcut using following command:

explorer.exe shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

And its not any new thing in Windows 7 or later. It was also present in Windows Vista.

Person 1: Says nothing and leaves the room…

PS: If you want a ready-made “God Mode” shortcut, download following ZIP file, extract it and run the extracted file. It’ll directly launch the so called hidden secret GodMode:

Download “Windows 7 God Mode” Shortcut

Also check:

Published in: Windows 7

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

  1. Excellent article(s). Your articles here are like a ‘Masters Class’ on the subject. Awesome!

    Thx.

  2. Brilliant, thanks.

    BTW ‘voila’ only has one ‘L’ in it – unless Redmond have changed the French language in ‘God Mode’ :o)

  3. I tried this and I still can’t access some things without an admin account. I’m using a school laptop.

  4. A friend has just told me about this. As soon as he told me I knew I recognised the code format and then a few seconds later I knew it would have been some sort of registry string. As soon as I figured that out I then guessed that it wouldn’t be as cool as he was making it sound because for it to be in the registry it would have to be installed by Microsoft šŸ™

  5. Oh come on guys – to me this “is” God Mode.
    I know nothing of registry this and run cmd that.
    A simple folder, a couple of letters and voila – here we have a new shiny toy that even us tech can work out and play with : )

    Bring on these new shiny things that will keep our attention span for a few minutes.
    Great article by the way.

  6. Just wanted to drop a quick line to tell you thanks, no one else showed to put God Mode. before the list of #’s and on my system you had to have that included.

  7. God mode is simply a more accessible user interface to controls available elsewhere. M$ has adopted the principle since VISTA that it wants to limit access to files and the internal workings of your machine as much as possible in order to satsify its protectionism and third party copyright content protectors (erm. or rather usually exploiters). Its a lazy (and probably illegal antitrust) way to make money rather than truly innovate new products. Of course they’ll say it is a security measure, but really it has very little to do with security of the user, as they need constant spying on the machine in order to police this way, so usually their systems are less secure in reality, and then coupling this nanny state is really frustrating for developers or to those who want to make their machine run the fastest or be most useable for real work. I’m sure God mode will be disabled and not just hidden in the next Windows version. This aint going to get better with new Windows versions, but only worse. My XP machine still runs faster and I can actually get work done.

  8. Why does the “Screen Shot” say …Gode Mode… ( not “God Mode” )
    in order to access the options you list?

  9. I absolutely LOVE codes and my hero is Walter O’Brian. My question was where to go on my lenovo laptop to enter god mode?

  10. Thank you. This just confirms what I suspected all along, while reading another ā€œsensationalā€ article about this ā€œGod modeā€.

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