It's probably simplest for most of us to have Explorer open to the C: drive; however, the default in most versions of Windows 9x/ME (just C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE) has Explorer opening to My Documents. If you're like me and prefer to have Explorer open to the C: drive, here's how. Right-click on your Explorer shortcut, as above, select Properties, and open the Shortcut tab. Edit the entry in the Target field to read: C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /E,/SELECT, C: . This does the trick. Rather have Explorer open to the Desktop? In 95 and 98, have the shortcut read: C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /E,ROOT , and in Millennium, have it read: C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE /E,/SELECT,/ROOT, <any folder path>. For Win 2K and XP, it's a bit simpler. If you want Windows Explorer to open to the folder C:\My Documents, for example, right-click the Windows Explorer shortcut that you use to run the program and choose "Properties." At the Windows Explorer Properties dialog box, click the Shortcut tab. Click in the Target entry box, and then press End. Add to the end of the existing line "/E, C:\My Documents". The complete line in the Target entry box should now be: %SYSTEMROOT%\EXPLORER.EXE /E, C:\My Documents The /E switch tells Windows Explorer to open in the two-pane Explorer mode and the C:\ tells it to open in folder C:\. If you wish to have Explorer open in the C:\ drive, leave off "My Documents." If you omit the /E switch, Windows Explorer opens in a single-pane view.

In Windows 98, My Computer and Windows Explorer don't volunteer much information about your files, folders, or hard drive. Most of the time, they merely list file and folder names in alphabetical order. Here are a couple ways to see all the gory information about files, folders, and disk drives. While holding down Alt, double-click on any file, folder, shortcut, or icon on your desktop. A box opens on-screen and reveals its properties: its size, name, creation date, and the date it was last saved. You also find a list of its attributes: technical information about the file's various technical switches. If you click on a shortcut, however, the properties box only tells you information about the shortcut. To see information about the real thing -- the file, folder, or drive that the shortcut points to -- click on the properties box's Shortcut tab and click on the Find Target button. That sequence brings the real thing to the screen.

It's not hard to make Explorer open successive folders in a single window: In any Explorer window, select View, Options; select the Folder tab; choose "Browse Folders Using A Single Window," and then click OK. Or, if you have IE 4.x installed--or had it installed and then upgraded to a later version of IE--select View, Folder Options; select Custom, "Based On Settings You Choose;" click the Settings button; select "Open Each Folder In The Same Window," and click OK. There's also a handy shortcut that goes with this procedure: just hold down Ctrl as you double-click a folder icon (inside an already-open window), and Windows will do the OPPOSITE of what you've asked. So, for example, if you've selected "Open Each Folder In The Same Window," holding down Ctrl will force Windows to open the folder in a separate window--and vice versa.

To create a locked folder in Windows, launch Explorer and navigate to the directory one level above the folder you want to lock. Click Run in the Start menu, type the word COMMAND, and press Enter. A command window will open in the folder displayed by Explorer. Say you're naming the folder "Private"; enter the command REN PRIVATE PRIVATEX, but instead of typing X, hold down the Alt key and type 255. To unlock the folder from the command prompt, enter REN PRIVATE PRIVATEX (again replacing X with Alt-255). When the folder is locked, Windows won't be able to open it, though it will be visible as Private. This tip was useful even under ancient DOS versions, and it still works in Windows 95, 98, and ME, but not in Windows 2000 and XP. If you attempt to open the locked folder in Explorer, you'll get a message telling you the folder is not accessible; the folder was moved or removed. Of course, you know better. If you attempt to rename it, you'll get a different message, like Cannot rename file: File system error (1026). Note that to enter ASCII character 255 you must hold down the Alt key, tap the numbers 2-5-5 on the numeric keypad, and then release the Alt key. You can't use the top-row number keys for this procedure.

You can experience a "disk full error" if you attempt to store a large number of small files on a disk, even if the total amount of data you are storing is only a fraction of the available disk space. Many users aren't aware that the number of files in the root folder of any disk is limited. For example, a floppy disk's root folder will hold 112 files, while a hard disk can hold 512. The solution to this potential problem is to store all your files in one or more folders.

Some 2K/XP users find themselves unable to delete files or folders. Here's where you folks should go for help: the KB article "You Cannot Delete a File or Folder" at support.microsoft.com/?kbid=320081. The article describes a situation for those who may not be able to delete a file or a folder on an NTFS file system volume.

Select a branch in Explorer that you want to expand and press the * key on the numeric keypad. If you selected Desktop, all directories will expand; if you selected a particular drive, all of that drive's folders will expand. Collapse them again by pressing the minimize button (the minus) on the top folder, then pressing F5.

If you're in Windows Explorer, you're in a folder, and you want to move one level up (back towards the root drive), you could click the Up One Level icon, or you could just tap the Backspace key.

Or make WinEx sort your folders by size. Select Details from the View menu and click the Size button to see the files listed in size order, biggest first. Click the Size button again to see them in reverse order, smallest first.

WinEx doesn't like to show folder sizes, although it will show individual file sizes. This can be annoying. There are two ways to force Explorer to own up. One is to right-click on the folder and select Properties from the drop-down next to "Size," or put the mouse pointer over the folder and wait for a tool tip to appear and magically give you the folder size. Remember, subfolders' sizes are counted in a folder's size. If you want a better option, you need to use something like Space Dolphin's free Folder Size Shell Extension 3.2, available from space.dolphin.free.fr/Windows/dfolder.html. This software lists the size of the folder next to the folder name. It works with Windows 9x and is partially supported with Windows 2k/XP.

If you've got a lot of folders open in WinEx, you can close all of them, or at least most of them, by holding down the Shift key as you click the Close box (the X in the upper right corner). Doing this closes that folder and any others above it in the folder hierarchy.

Create a locked folder by going into Windows Explorer and navigating to the directory one level above the folder you want to lock (i.e. if you want to lock C:\PROGRAM FILES\LOCKME then navigate to C:\PROGRAM FILES\). In the Start menu, open Run and type COMMAND. A command window will open in the folder displayed by Explorer. Enter the command REN LOCKME LOCKMEX, but instead of typing the final X, hold down the Alt key and type 255. To unlock the folder from the command prompt, enter REN LOCKMEX LOCKME, again replacing the X with Alt+255. When the folder is locked, Windows won't be able to open it, though it will display the folder name.

When you need to drag & drop objects from one Explorer window to another, it's nice to have both of them side by side. Instead of jockeying the windows manually, you can fire up two (or more) instances of the Windows Explorer, right-click on your taskbar, and select either 'Tile Windows Horizontally' or 'Tile Windows Vertically' from the menu. You've got two nicely positioned Explorer windows ready for business. When you're finished manipulating those files and folders, you can right-click on your taskbar again and select 'Undo Tile' from the menu.

Here are some Explorer shortcuts (Internet Explorer uses some of the same shortcuts):

• F1: Help

• F2: Rename currently selected items

• F3: Find files in currently selected folder

• F4: Drop-down list for disk drives

• F5: Refresh current folder display

• F6: Switch focus to different parts of window, a la Tab

• F10: Switch focus to menu bar

• Shift+F10: Open context menu (also opened by right-clicking mouse)

• Shift+right-click (on a file or folder): Opens different context menu allowing you to alter file view, rearrange icons, or create a new file or folder

• F11: Toggle full-screen ("kiosk") mode on and off (not in Win 95 unless you've got the IE4 Desktop Update)

• * (asterisk): Expands all the subfolders of a selected drive.

• Ctrl+W: shuts down Explorer altogether (also works with a My Computer window)

You can also find out about WinEx's command-line shortcuts at support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q152457&.

You can make Windows Explorer constantly refresh and update its files and folder views. Go through the Registry through RegEdit, and navigate through the left-hand pane until you get to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / System / CurrentControlSet / control / Update item. In the right-hand pane, click on UpdateMode and select Modify. In the Edit window, change 01 to 00. Exit everything and reboot for this to take effect.

Win 98/ME users, you can customize your folders' display properties by using "folder templates" to control their appearance. Here's a neato example of how this works, cribbed from Dan Gookin's excellent Win ME manual. By going through this, you'll not only create a fearsomely customized "Personal" folder in My Documents, you'll also see how all of this customization works before you apply it to any of your real folders.

First, create a new Personal folder by going into My Documents, choosing File, New, Folder, and rename the folder Personal. Nothing is in this folder, and that's the idea -- you want to practice this stuff on something innocuous right now. Now choose View, Customize This Folder. Click Next. Now check everything in the Customization Wizard, and chant "boom-swatti-whoosh!" while Windows does its thing. Here's what happened:

• Adding a Folder Template: a folder template is an HTML file plus a script that controls the appearance of the folder. The wizard gives you four templates to choose from. Standard is a good default choice, while Image Preview works well for folders containing graphics. You can preview all four choices.

• Background Image: you can choose a background image to serve as the backdrop for your folder display. The selection is automatically tiled, so don't use something too large or overly complex. You may want to change the text color also, depending on your background image choice (under Filename Appearance).

• Comment: you can enter a comment that appears when information is gathered about this folder. For this example, type "Personal Stuff, Keep Out!" in the comment area. If you know HTML commands, you can add HTML tags to this comment.

Clicking Next and Finish takes you to the end of the customization process. Now take a look at what you've created. Cool, huh? Of course, you can undo all of your customizations by going back through the process, choosing the Standard template, choosing (None) as the background image, resetting the Filename Appearance colors to black and white, and deleting the Comment text. For all intents and purposes, this little tutorial is done; if you don't see a need for a Personal folder, delete it. Want more? Read the "Configuration of the My Documents Folder" article at support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;221837.

Other folder display options can be accessed under Tools, Folder Options. You can choose from Active Desktop (annoying unless you want Web material butting into your work all the time), Web View (another annoyance in my opinion, but some people like the left-side information display), Browse Folders (decides whether windows open in their own display windows or not), and File-Clicking (single or double). In this same dialog box you've got a View tab which gives you further options. You can force all the folders in Explorer to appear "Like Current Folder," which entails mass changes. If you press "Reset All Folders," you change everything back to the way Windows originally had them. Now go through the menu options. A few of note: you can choose to display Hidden files (my recommendation, unless there are people with access to your computer who don't need to have access to these files), you can choose whether or not to display file extensions (I like mine displayed; you may not), you can choose to have Windows remember each individual window setting every time you open that window, and you can choose whether or not to hide protected system files (a very good idea unless you know what you're doing). The button at the bottom, "Restore Defaults," resets the menu options to the factory defaults. Wasn't this fun?

A sidebar to the above note: Windows marks each file as either "Read Only," "Archive," "Hidden", or "System." A file marked Read Only can be read but not deleted or changed in any way. An Archive file is set if a file has changed since the last time it was backed up with a special Windows NT Backup command. A Hidden file is invisible during normal operations. A System file is required by a computer's operating system.

Sometimes Millennium chooses to "customize" its display in Explorer all on its own, refusing to display thumbnail pictures in its display. This may be due to a corrupted line in the Registry. Find out by going through Start, Run, and typing REGSVR32 THUMBVW.DLL without quotes in the Run field. This updates the Registry by inserting the THUMBVW.DLL file to allow viewing of .BMP and .JPG files.

XP users can do their own folder customizing, with some extra tidbits other Windows users don't have. For example, the "Choose Details" option lets you see additional information about specific files: music files display artist info, while digital pics display the date the picture was taken as well as the dimensions. The "Show in Groups" option lets you group files any way you like for future display.

I get confused between copying files and moving files using the drag-and-drop option. If you d&d a file between two drives, it copies the file without moving it. If you d&d a file between two folders on the same drive, it moves the file. If this tangles you up too, consider using the right mouse button for dragging and dropping. A menu pops up that gives you the choice of copying, moving, or creating a shortcut to the item. But you want to do it the hard way. Okay. Do you want to move that file to another folder, copy it to another folder, or create a shortcut to it? To move a file, left-drag it (drag it by clicking on the file with the left mouse button and dragging it) to another folder on the same drive. To force a move, hold the Shift key down as you drag. By left-dragging a file from one drive to another, you will copy it. To force a copy, hold the Ctrl key down as you drag. When you try to drag an executable file (*.EXE) from one place to another, you won't move or copy anything...you'll create a shortcut to the file instead. Watch the "ghostly" filename that appears during the drag -- if it shows a box with a + in it, you're copying. A box with an arrow indicates creation of a shortcut. No box indicates a move. To abort a drag, press ESC before releasing the mouse button. You can make things easier on yourself by right-dragging; doing so gives you a menu of options to choose from.

While you're working out this left- vs. right-click notion, here's something else to chew on: You may already know that you can select multiple files by clicking near them, holding the mouse button, and dragging the mouse cursor over the files you want to choose. Do it with the right mouse button and you not only select the files, you get the right-click context menu that includes the Open, Send To, Cut, Copy, Delete, Rename, Create Shortcut and Properties commands.

If you're in mid-drag (or even mid-click) and realize you've clicked or dragged the wrong thing, don't panic. You haven't actually done anything until you've released the mouse button with your finger. Just keep that mouse button pressed down, drag the cursor off-screen entirely, and then let it go. No harm, no foul.

It is way, way too easy to mistakenly move files around in Explorer. Use the Edit menu's Undo function to remedy a mistaken move.

When you move or copy files from one folder to another, Windows checks the target folder for files that have the same name as the ones you're copying. If it finds duplicate names, it asks whether you want to overwrite the file in the target folder. If there are more than one duplicate file, you get four options: Yes (overwrite just this file), Yes to All (overwrite all files with matching names), No (don't overwrite the file), and Cancel (bail out of the entire process). Clicking Yes or No can give you further prompts as the copying procedure continues. Clicking Yes to All eliminates the need for further clicking, but takes a little more time, as Windows overwrites files you've previously loaded. Where's the No to All choice? It exists, but not as a menu choice. When you click No, hold down the Shift key. Windows will then move or copy all files except for the ones with duplicate names.

Users of newer versions of Windows have found that their version of Explorer is a bit overprotective about letting them access the WINDOWS and WINDOWS\SYSTEM folders. Every time they access these folders through Explorer, they have to sit through a warning message and click a "Show Files" link. Annoying. Make this little nag disappear by following these steps: Start Explorer, choose View, Folder Options, View, and make sure that the "Show All Files" option (under the Hidden folder) is checked . Open the folder you want to liberate (either WINDOWS or WINDOWS\SYSTEM) and choose View, Details. Scroll through the folder and find the file FOLDER.HTT. Right-click the file, choose Rename, and type FOLDER_HTT.OLD. Navigate to WINDOWS\WEB and highlight the file called FOLDER.HTT. Choose File, Copy to put the file on the Clipboard. Go back to the WINDOWS folder and choose File, Paste. Now, when you choose View, As Web Page, this version of FOLDER.HTT ensures that you don't have to deal with the warning and the extra click. It's more of a workaround than an actual solution, but whaddya want?

In a related issue, sometimes Win XP refuses to remember your folder settings, even when the checkbox "Remember each folder's view settings" is checked. By default, Windows XP remembers the last 400 folder settings. After 400, it's supposed to discard the oldest settings, so that it always remembers the most recent 400. In some cases, however, it just stops remembering new settings when the number of settings hits 400. The steps that follow will clear all your old folder settings so Windows XP can remember more, and also raises the limit higher than 400. Here's what you do. First, roll up your sleeves and launch Regedit. Navigate to the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Shell. If this key is not present, skip to the next Registry key listed in the procedure. If a subkey named BagMRU is present, delete the entire subkey. If a subkey named Bags is present, delete the entire subkey. Look for a value named BagMRU Size (with a space between BagMRU and Size). If this value is not present, select New, DWORD Value from the Edit menu and name the new value BagMRU Size. Double-click on the BagMRU Size value, choose Decimal, and enter the desired number of folder settings for Win XP to remember (for example, 1,000). Navigate to the Registry key HKEY_ CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ ShellNoRoam. If present, repeat the earlier deletions. That should cure Windows XP's faulty memory. The OS will "forget" all existing folder settings, but from this point onward, it should remember them correctly.

In Win 98/ME, you may wayt your display to show a particular view as a default, whether it be "List," "Details," "Folders," or "Icons." There are two ways of handling this. First, you can hunt through the folder options of any folder window to find a button marked "Like Current Folder." This button sets the default state of all folder windows to be like those of the current folder, so if you configure all the visible formatting and default behaviors of the current folder, i.e. as icon size, alignment, wrapping, toolbar customizations, status bar, and so on, and then press this button, you will create the default you desire. Different versions of Windows put the Folder Options dialog in different places, but you'll find it somewhere on the menu of any open folder window. (Windows XP changes the name of the button to "Apply to All Folders.") In some versions of Windows, Like Current Folder works most of the time. It may not apply to any folder that has "Web content" in folders enabled. In that case, you may be frustrated, because no matter how you twiddle the controls, your default settings may only be default in most of the folders, not all of them. Weird, huh? The second way to fix the problem works with older versions of Windows (such as Windows 95), that don't have the Like Current Folder button. You may also find it useful in newer versions of Windows because it's fast and easy. Follow these steps: Drag and drop the C: drive out of My Computer onto the desktop. Close My Computer. Double-click the C: drive icon. Configure the view of that folder exactly as you like it. Then hold down the Ctrl, Alt, and Shift keys while simultaneously clicking the X box (the one that closes the folder) in the upper right corner of the C: folder window. This should do the trick. One caveat: depending on how often you customize specific folder windows, you may find that Windows eventually forgets the default you created with Ctrl-Alt-Shift-X box. You may have to redo them once a week, once a month, or once a year. Win 95 had a limited memory for such settings. Eventually that memory will overflow and older settings will be overwritten. But, we cross those bridges when we get to them.

The Details view in WinEx has a lot of info to offer. You can choose the way your folder info is presented by going under View and choosing Large Icons running horizontally across the display (the default), Small Icons running horizontally, small icons running vertically (List), or a table-like format with columns of info about each file (Details). The default view is OK for the novice, but as you get used to rummaging about in your machine, you should switch to the Details view.

You can easily change the folder icons in Windows Explorer. Open up Explorer, right-click on the folder you want to change, and click Properties. Select the Customize tab. At the bottom of the window, click the Change Icon button. That will present you with more than 200 icons. When you find one you like, click it and click OK. Then click Apply, OK. You also can place pictures within the folder icons. However, you can only use Thumbnails view for that (click View, Thumbnails). The picture must already be on your hard drive. To place a picture within an icon, go to the Customize tab as before. Click Choose Picture. At the top of the Window, navigate to the picture on the hard drive. Click it and click Open. Click Apply, OK. Custom icons also can be designed in Paint. Click Image, Attributes. Height and width should be set to 32 pixels. After your design is drawn, click File, Save As, and save it anywhere you like on your hard drive. You can also use freeware programs such as IcoFolder (camtech2000.net/Pages/IcoFolder.html) and ActivIcons (www.cursorarts.com/ca_aifw.html) to play with your icons.

When you select Details from Explorer's View menu, you can sort the info by Name, Size, Type, or Modified (date and time). To rearrange the order of these headings, drag&drop the header bars at the top of the Contents pane. Use these sort options to help find that one file out of the yea hundred possibilities. If you know the date the file was created, sort by File. If you know what type the file is, sort by Type. If you know the file's size, sort by Size.

If you open a folder in Details view, and the information isn't fully visible, fix the size of the columns by pressing Ctrl+Plus (on the numeric keypad). The columns will automatically resize to fit your screen. If you're in Windows Explorer, select the proper pane first by pressing Tab until it is highlighted. (This little trick works with numerous programs and applications, too.)

Here's some tweaks for the Details view, available for Win 98 users or Win 95 users who've installed MSIE 4's Desktop Update.

• Tweak your column display; if you don't need a particular column, eliminate it. Move your mouse pointer over the divider to the right of the column until the pointer turns into a double arrow; now drag left, shrinking the column until it disappears. Make it come back by positioning the mouse pointer to the right of the same divider (you'll notice that the double arrow becomes "hollow"), and drag to the right until the column reappears.

• You can get details without going through Details view. Press Alt and double-click a file or folder, or select a file or folder and press Alt+Enter, to see its Properties sheet. This dialog box lists most everything you'll see in Details view, and also gives the amount of disk space allocated for the file or folder, identifies a path you can drag over to highlight and then copy and paste the contents elsewhere, and tells you when the file or folder was created and when it was last accessed. If you really want to get the info in order, use the freeware PropertiesPlus from www.ne.jp/asahi/cool/kish/ to view and/or modify the properties of a particular file or folder.

• Sort the information -- click the column heading to sort by that particular attribute, and click again to reverse the sort order.

• Reorder the columns by dragging&dropping a column heading onto the dividing line between two other columns. The whole column moves when you release the mouse button.

• You can force an individual column to resize its width to accommodate its longest entry by double-clicking the right edge of the column heading. Or resize them all at once by pressing Ctrl+(Plus).

• Need a wider view, and scrolling horizontally annoys you? Going under View and unchecking the "View as Web Page" option gives you a little more room by eliminating the File Preview area.

• Make some wide-ranging changes by going through View, Options or View, Folder Options and examining the settings under Advanced. Make sure the "Remember each folder's view settings" is checked. Make the changes you want, and click Apply. Then click the "Like Current Folder" button in the dialog box, and click Yes. Now all of your folders will display under your customized settings.

By the way, impress your tech friends with the proper scrolling terminology. "Panning" means to scroll by using the scroll bars, whether it be up, down, left, or right. "Thumbing" means using the "thumb," the little box in the scroll bar that you can click and drag to move you around in the screen.

You can really impress your friends by using the new right-click menu for the scroll bar in the newer versions of Internet Explorer, Notepad, Windows Explorer, and some other Microsoft apps. Right-click the scroll bar and see what's available.

After installing Windows 98 Second Edition (upgrade or full version) you will find that there is no Attribute column in Explorer. You can add this column to Explorer by launching RegEdit, going to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced, and changing the "ShowAttribCol Dword" value from 0 to 1 by clicking on it. As always, exercise caution when tramping through the Registry.

Make Windows Explorer 'fess up to a folder's total size, including all subfolders and contained files, by right-clicking the file and selecting Properties. Next to the "Size" in the resulting dialog box you'll see the total file size.

You can also work with WinEx to print your directory structure (a list of files in their respective folders). Unfortunately, you have to "cheat" by going through DOS, since Windows doesn't support such a task. However, you can do this without going to MS-DOS itself. This shortcut won't handle your entire directory structure, but you can print the contents of individual folders such as My Documents. Here's how: Go into My Documents, then click File, New, Shortcut. You'll see the Create Shortcut box appear. In the Command line text box, type this exactly:
  COMMAND /C DIR /O > PRN
Now click Next, and type the title "Print a List of Files." Click Finish, and you'll see the new icon appearing in your My Documents folder. Don't click it yet! Instead, right-click it and choose Properties. Click the Program tab. Erase any text, if any, in the Working box. Make sure a check mark is in the "Close on Exit" box, and click OK. Cool. Now give it a test drive. Make sure the printer is online and ready to go, and double-click the "Print a List of Files" icon. You may or may not see a DOS screen appear and disappear. And viola...the list, she prints! Well, maybe not. If not, try to goose the printer by pressing the Form Feed or Eject button to get it off its duff. Want to print a list of files for another folder? You'll need to copy the "Print a List of Files" icon to that folder. (Hey, Mr. Wizard, what do those DOS commands in the command line mean, anyway? The COMMAND /C portion tells the computer to go into DOS mode, and the /C switch tells it to close the DOS window as soon as the task is completed. The DIR /O portion has DOS display the proper set of directory files, and the /O switch forces them to be alphabetized. The > PRN section sends the output directly to the printer. You can find out more about printing out a Windows Explorer Folder Directory Listing using Notepad at support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;272623.

One deceptively simple way to find a file is to right-click on the folder it's in (well, you have to know this much for this tip to work) and select Find from the Context menu. Find will search the folder and all the subfolders within, based on the search criteria you specify.

You can resize Windows Explorer's various panes easily enough; just hold the cursor over the right vertical edge of the pane, and when it turns into a double arrow, click and drag it where you want it. You can also resize every column to be as wide as possible by simply selecting any item and pressing Ctrl+Plus (the plus key). Make sure the right pane is active before doing this.

You can open any folder in a two-paned window with a navigation tree by simply right-clicking the folder icon and choosing Explore. Similarly, by holding down Shift and double-clicking the folder icon, you can open the folder in an Explorer window. If you like to do this regularly, you can make this the default opening style by opening a folder, choosing View/Options, choosing the File Types tab, selecting Folder, and choosing Edit. Under Actions, highlight Explore. Click on Set Default. The Explore entry becomes bold, making it the default operation for a double-click. If you want to reverse the setting, follow the same steps, but highlight Open instead of Explore.

Explorer lets you select multiple files or items by simply pressing Ctrl as you click each item. But there's another way to skin this particular cat. What if you have 50 items and want to select 45? Well, you can do it the hard way, or you can approach it from the other direction. Select the items you don't want with the Ctrl+left mouse click procedure, then go to Edit and choose Invert Selection. Windows turns your selections inside out and voila! you've selected the 45 items you did want.

Hunting for graphics files? You can use a graphics program to preview the yea dozen graphics you have on your system (who can remember what each file is? not me), or you can let WinEx's thumbnail view do it for you. Put them all into a single folder, open Windows Explorer to that folder, and choose from the View menu to see the files As Web Page. This will make a preview pane to show thumbnail images of the graphic files. In Win ME, you're given a Thumbnail option under View that gives you the proper display.

Create a new folder with a single shortcut: open the folder in which you want to create a new folder and press Alt+F+Enter+Enter.

Finding the File, New command too slow? Bypass it altogether by selecting Folder Options from Explorer's View menu, clicking the File types tab, choosing File Folder from the list, and clicking the Edit... button (the Advanced button in Windows 2000 or Windows ME). In the "Edit File Type" dialog box, click the New... button. Enter New Subfolder in the Action box, and in the Application box enter this line:

COMMAND.COM /C MD "%1\NEW FOLDER"

Click OK, then click New... again and create an action named "Five New Subfolders" with this command:

COMMAND.COM /C FOR %%V IN (1 2 3 4 5) DO MD "%1\NEW FOLDER (%%V)"

Click OK to close all the option windows. If you're running Win2K or NT4, simply replace COMMAND.COM with CMD.EXE in both of the commands. Be careful when entering the commands in Win2K, as the default permissions will prevent you from editing or removing the new commands using the Edit File Type dialog. If you need to change or remove these items in Win2K, you'll have to use the Registry Editor. Now when you right-click a folder icon, you can choose one of the new commands directly from the pop-up menu. You'll have to rename the created folders right away, but that's still a lot faster than waiting for File, New to come up.

Sometimes Windows doesn't like to open Windows Explorer in the same view that you exited from -- it resizes the window, changes the toolbar or the sort order, etc. Try this as a temporary workaround: Go into Windows Explorer and, without opening any files, rearrange and reset things just the way you like them, files, toolbars, everything. Then, as you get ready to click the X to leave, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift and click the X as you hold those keys down. This forces Windows to remember the Explorer settings and bring it up in that same fashion next time you open it.

Sometimes when you open a folder in Details view, part of it may not be visible because the columns are either truncated or too wide for the window size. Fix it by pressing Ctrl+Plus (on the numeric pad). The columns will automatically adjust to fit the window or widen to show all the data (if your resolution and screen size are large enough). In an Explorer window, you may need to select the pane first by pressing Tab.

Make Explorer come up in a dual-pane view (as a default, even) by opening any folder and choosing View/Options. Under File Types, select the Folder item from the Registered File Types list and click Edit. Highlight Explore in the Actions window, click on the Set Default button, and click OK twice. To reverse the setting, do the same thing, but highlight Open instead of Explore.

Reformatting a formatted floppy disk from within Explorer can be done, but has its idiosyncrasies. Drive A: should not be highlighted. Right-click on Drive A: and choose Format from the menu that appears. Easier to do it through My Computer.

While Windows Explorer is a useful piece of 'ware, there are times when you'd rather not bother with it. Some relatively simple, and often common, tasks can be performed within most apps' Open or Save As dialog boxes, such as creating new folders, deleting files, renaming files, etc. Play around with the various functions and see which apps will let you perform which functions.

Win ME users may know that Millennium adds .ZIP file support. What they may not know is that Millennium calls it "Compressed Folders," and that it isn't part of the typical install. If you can't find Compressed Folders in your System Tools menu, add it by going through Control Panel's Add/Remove applet, clicking the Windows Setup tab, locating the utility under System Tools, and following the prompts. Once the utility is added, Windows will display zipped files with a zipper icon. You can add, remove, and delete the files as you would uncompressed files, but files launched from within a compressed folder go to C:\WINDOWS\TEMP when saved. To create a .ZIP file, right-click a blank area within Windows Explorer and select New, Compressed Folder.

The "map drive button" that you see in the toolbar of any Windows Explorer window is really intended for network users. The button allows you to map a drive letter (example: M:\) to any network, web, or FTP location. If you are a web developer then you have a quick way to map to your FTP site to upload HTML files. It doesn't hurt system performance to just have the button, but you can remove it if you don't think you will use it. In Windows 2000 (and it may be the same on other Windows operating systems) you just go to View, Toolbars, Customize... and from there you can choose to remove the map drive button from the list of current toolbar buttons. You can also use this method to add more buttons/options to your Windows Explorer toolbar.

If you receive an error message like this one: "Explorer Has Caused An Error In Kernel32.dll," odds are there's a control panel file (with the .CPL extension) in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder that is damaged or otherwise incompatible with the OS. Here's how to resolve the problem. First, start your system in Safe Mode (hold down the Ctrl key while the PC is booting up and choose Safe Mode; XP users may need to enter MSCONFIG in the Start menu's Run dialog, then click on the BOOT.INI tab and check the /SAFEBOOT box. Reboot to enter Safe mode. Repeat the process and uncheck the box when you're through with Safe Mode). Then, click the Start button, Search, choose "For Files Or Folders," and type *.CPL in the "Search For Files Or Folders Named" field. Click Search Now, noting the original file names. In the Search Results pane, right-click a .CPL file in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder, and click Rename. Rename the MCA.CPL file first (if it exists), and also rename the first file in the Search Results pane to an .OLD file extension: say, if the file name is FILE.CPL, rename the file to FILE.OLD. Also, note which file you have renamed on the list of original file names. To see if it worked, try to open the Control Panel. Keep repeating this process until you can open the Control Panel, and verify that the last file you renamed is the damaged or incompatible file. Then, rename all of the files you renamed back to the original file names, except for the file that you determined is causing the issue. When you're finished, reboot your computer. Yes, this is tedious, but so is reinstalling Windows.

A reader alerted me to an odd problem he was having with his version of Windows Explorer; seems his left page had gone completely grey on him. That's not good. Both he and I suspected Registry corruption, but we were both wrong; he found the solution to be an upgrade of his version of Internet Explorer. Why, you ask? Because WinEx and MSIE are tightly integrated, and a bad installation or corruption in one can affect the other. If this happens to you, try reinstalling MSIE, either using the same version or an upgrade. Thanks for the heads-up, Dan.