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A rather silly “trick” ( and really that’s all it is, has been making headlines over the last few days. From what I can tell it was really brought to the forefront by Ina Fried from CNET who says:

“By creating a new folder in Windows 7 and renaming it with a certain text string at the end, users are able to have a single place to do everything from changing the look of the mouse pointer to making a new hard drive partition.”

So somebody decided to call this “God Mode” because to enable this “trick” you make a folder called GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} and double-click on it. What you end up with is… drum roll… the control panel; it’s just in a different view than you’d normally see.

First of all, the text ”GodMode” has nothing to do with making the trick work. You can call the folder “IFreakinRawk.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}” and now you’ve discovered the magical “IFreakinRawk” feature hidden in Windows.

In reality all you have discovered is:

A documented feature of the shell. Folders can be easily made into ‘namespace junctions’. The whole thing is described on MSDN. Basically, any folder named <DisplayName>.<CLSID> will show up with just the <DisplayName> portion visible in Explorer, and navigating into the folder will take you to the namespace root defined by the <CLSID> portion of the name. This isn’t for USERS, it’s really more of a developer feature.

The second thing is that it’s really the “All Tasks” folder. This is a special shell folder which is used as the source of the “Control Panel” search results seen in the Start menu. This folder was not designed to be browsed to directly, as the normal Control Panel folder (accessible via Start -> Control Panel) contains all the same items but with a custom view designed to be easier to navigate. The “All Tasks” folder has no custom view, so you just see the standard Explorer list view and little else.

The existence of this folder and its CLSID are implementation details and should not be relied upon by anybody for any purpose.

So the previously thought RTM date didn’t happen but Mary Jo Foley apparently has the official scoop on dates from Microsoft on when Windows 7 will hit the streets. So who gets it and when?

OEMs: Two days after RTM

ISVs and IHV partners: August 6 (downloadable via Microsoft Connect or MSDN)

Microsoft Gold certified resellers: August 16 (downloadable from the partner portal in English only); October 1 (other language)

TechNet subscribers: August 6 (English only); October 1 (other languages)

MSDN subscribers: August 6 (English only); October 1 (other languages)

Microsoft “Action Pack” subscribers: August 23 (English only); October 1 (remaining languages)

Volume licensees with existing Software Assurance license: August 7 (downloadable from the Volume License Service Center in English); a couple of weeks after that for other languages. (So my original post on when business users would get Windows 7 wasn’t really wrong, after all. Glad we cleared that up. Not!)

Volume licensees without a Software Assurance license: September 1 (downloadable from the Volume License Service Center)

Consumers: General availability begins October 22. Retailers and OEMs will be offering new systems preloaded with Windows 7 and copies of Windows 7 at retail on that day.

Oddly, while Microsoft has stated the above dates it still hasn’t released the official RTM date.

Earlier today GeekSmack.net “confirmed” that Windows 7 was set to RTM (release to manufacturing) on July 13. This coincides with Wzor’s “unconfirmed” rumor last month. A few minutes ago sources close to the company confirmed to Neowin that Windows 7 is indeed set to RTM on July 13. The date, July 13, also coincides with the kickoff of the Worldwide Partner Conference that is taking place in New Orleans.

Note: RTM and GA (General Availability) are two totally different phases. RTM is typically the final build before Windows 7 hits general availability later this year. RTM is provided to manufacturers so they can work out any bugs with hardware devices. General availability is scheduled to launch on October 22. RTM DOES mean that those with subscriptions to TechNet, MSDN, etc will be getting the RTM build on July 13th!

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I’ve tried to include a wide variety of tools that are easy to use, and have tried to keep them as OS and technology-independent as possible so that everyone can find a tool or two.

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