How to track directory opening

I'm not sure if the question's title makes sense, and I'm sorry if it doesn't; I didn't really know what to title it.. Anyway, is there a way to make your program track the viewing of a folder?

What I'm trying to achieve: Windows 7 Home Premium doesn't allow encryption. So, I made a folder inside my user di开发者_运维知识库rectory, and set it to hidden. Although, you can easily find it by changing windows settings.. So, is there a way to make a program pull up a window if the user tries to access that certain folder?

I don't think you can detect the "opening" of a folder. Instead, you may want to set a FileSystemWatcher to detect any file access to the files in that particular folder.

Hope this helps.

First of all, I have to wonder why you're not just setting an ACL on the directory to prevent access.

However, it sounds like you want to find when somebody is accessing a particular directory. To do this, you enable filesystem auditing, then set the audit ACL to generate audit entries for "List folder". This will cause entries to be generated in the Security Event Log whenever the directory is viewed.

Now you just have to write a program that watches the Security event log looking for entries indicating that somebody has listed the directory in question and take action as necessary.

Well, there is an article on code project describing how you can hook into windows system calls: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/hooksys.aspx - it's not simple though (and also not C#) and has the potential to screw with your system but if it might be a fun project to work on.

A simpler option would be: Use a 3rd party desktop encryption tool - not much programming involved here but it might do the job better than anything else.