I'm looking for a small and free program that can password protect a folder. If this is possible, I'd like it to automaticaly ask for the password when someone wants to open the folder (so I don't have to open the program first to unlock it).
I'm not looking for encrypted containers like TrueCrypt provides (already installed, but it's such a hassle because I do have a lot of folders I'd like to password protect).

forgive me if i got it wrong but u can use rar as u can put any folder in there and protect it with strong password
and if u want syome thing else try to search it on the free or paid program sites
with best wishes.
moshakes

winrar isn't exactly what I'm looking for because it's uses the same principle as an encrypted container. And I've already did a search on several sites but I didn't find any. I even got to this search term in yahoo:

Not sure about encrypted container, but does Windows XP's folder protect feature have this container you are referring to as well? If not or you haven't tried it out yet, take a look at the folder protect feature:

http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/232

That would be ideal ... but I'm running a single user environement (I sometimes share my laptop with other people and they can use my account). But your suggestion reminded me about a program Microsoft released a while ago (and removed it a week later ). Anyone else remembers this program ?

//edit: microsoft private folder it is
//edit2: it does exactly what I want it to do, but I'm limited to only one folder ... and that not what I want :?

This post has been edited by wutske: Sep 10 2007, 07:49 AM

I looked for this in two of my favorite places, but the first search came out empty:
(http://www.filestube.com/search.html?q=microsoft+private+folder)
However, I did come across a small package in the second one - my favorite torrent site - and it looks like this on the inside:

(I edited the picture slightly and erased the name of the torrent site in order to stay out of trouble, but it begins with a "d", so that should make it easy to guess)

lol , I found it on softpedia.com , thanks for looking it up anyway .

I did however find a nice program called dirLock (http://www.download.com/dirLock/3000-2092_4-10558978.html?tag=lst-0-1). Too bad I have to retype my password everytime I want to lock it, but that's the least of my problems