You locked the folder yesterday. Today the Desktop shows nothing — no folder, no trace. Before your stomach finishes dropping, hear the good news: disappearing is exactly what this lock is designed to do, and your files are almost certainly still sitting right there.
A script lock works by making a folder invisible — renamed, then flagged hidden and system. To everyday Explorer settings, invisible and deleted look identical. They are not. Nothing was erased, nothing was encrypted, and there is a short, safe path to seeing the folder again. Work through it in order, and do not let any 'cleaner' or 'recovery' tool touch the drive in the meantime.
Illustration of the two Explorer settings. A locked folder is super-hidden, so both switches matter.
Open the location where the folder lived (Desktop, Documents, a drive). In Explorer's View menu, turn on Hidden items. If nothing appears yet, do not worry — a locked folder also carries the system flag, which this switch alone does not reveal. The lock's whole trick is the combination: hidden plus system. You need the second view setting, next.
The clean way back is the locker's own door: run the script again and type the password — the script renames the folder back and clears the flags with the matching command, the equivalent of attrib -s -h. If the script is missing or the password is forgotten, do it by hand: rename the disguised folder back to a plain name, then clear the attributes from Command Prompt with attrib -s -h "FolderName". Finally, go back to Folder Options and re-tick the protection setting you unticked, so real system files stay safely out of sight. Then solve the original problem — a password you cannot lose — with the recovery page in this set.
Occasionally the panic is real. Work this list before concluding anything: check the Recycle Bin; check whether the folder's parent location changed (a moved Desktop folder, a different drive letter, OneDrive relocating Desktop and Documents); search the whole PC for a file you know was inside, using its exact name; and check whether a well-meaning "PC cleaner" or another user moved or removed it — the lock cannot stop deletion, and it never could. Only after all four should you treat it as a data-recovery situation — and even then, stop writing to that drive immediately to keep recovery possible.
See the locking script built and tested live, then decide honestly whether it is strong enough for your folder.
▶️ Watch Full VideoThat is the lock working as designed. The script renames the folder and sets both the hidden and system attributes, and Explorer hides system-flagged items even when hidden files are shown. The folder and everything in it remain on the disk, unchanged.
Turn on Hidden items in Explorer's View menu, then in Folder Options untick Hide protected operating system files. The folder appears, greyed and under its renamed name. Run the locker script with your password, or rename it back and clear the flags with attrib -s -h, then restore the protection setting.
No. A script lock never deletes or encrypts anything — it only renames and hides. If the folder is genuinely absent after checking the Recycle Bin, moved locations and a full-PC search, something else removed it; the lock itself cannot do that.