Where has the normal address bar drop down arrow gone?

[Guest]

In windows 2000 and XP the drop down arrow at the right of the address bar at
the top of the window would link you to all kinds of useful places including
all of your hard drives, control panel, common folders and, most usefully,
removable drives such as a USB flash drive, allowing you to quickly do a
Ctrl+C on a file and naviagte to the drive, then Ctrl+V to copy over to it.

In Vista however, the drop down arrow just gives me a bunch of websites and
other stuff I have recently looked at, which is useless. I want to know if
there is a way to get the same drop down menu with all the useful stuff on
that existed in win XP and 2000.

Can anyone help?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Adam.

It would help us help you if you tell us WHICH window you are looking at and
asking about.

In Windows Explorer, click Organize | Layout and turn on the Navigation
pane, which appears at the left of the screen. Click Folders at the bottom
of this pane to expand it into the familiar tree, with Desktop at the top.
Personally, I seldom look in the top items here, but click on Computer, then
Drive C:. If you hover the mouse over a drive, you should see a triangular
arrow indicating that there are subfolders here. Click on the triangle to
see the directory of that drive in the Navigation pane. Or click on the
drive name to open that directory in the Details pane.

This Windows Explorer window is highly customizable. Spend some time
exploring here and you should be able to tailor it to your tastes. Some of
the settings can also be reached from Control Panel | Folder Options | View,
much like in WinXP. One useful setting is Always show menus; this shows the
Menu bar in Explorer, in addition to the Toolbar.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta 2 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 beta v.275)

 

[Kathy Hewett]

R C White's reply discussed HOW to find root drive info in a folder but I'd like to ask how to get the address bar's dropdown (in any folder on desktop) to STOP showing internet sites and only show drive info. Is it Vista's way of synchronizing desktop navigating with internet navigating?

Thanks
(Maybe it's me but I think, despite all of it's advantages, Vista may have made a few too many "user friendly" changes to the point of annoying!)

EggHeadCafe - .NET Developer Portal of Choice
http://www.eggheadcafe.com

 

[Guest]

Dear Kathy Hewett,
It seems that you want to know the same thing as me! Thank you for writing
out more clearly than I could manage! I though I had been quite clear, but
never mind. Hopefully someone will know the answer!

Surely everyone should find it a lot more useful to have a list of
drives/common folders than your browser history? I thought this version of
windows was supposed to be removing the ties between Windows Explorer and IE
on the grounds of security?


Dear R C White,

Thank you for your reply. In my query I was referring to a standard Windows
Explorer window, from which you can browse files and folders. In XP, the My
Computer and Control Panel windows also open in this type of window, with the
drop down menu of drives and useful folder locations available to take you
where ever on your machine you need to go.