My Windows XP machine will NOT display the names of the folders when the folder box is open. When it is minimized it does not display it on the task bar.

For example: "My Computer" simply is displayed as "M" at the top of the box. The same thing goes on the task bar.

Other subfolders have the same problem. The drive letter designation is all that is displayed.

This is frankly driving me nuts.

I have been through every possible option for folder options and have not found a cure.

Does anybody have a known way to fix this? Is there perhaps a registry problem? If so, what might it exactly be?!!

This is the XP side of a dual boot (98SE/XP) system and I really need to switch over to XP, but this little "feecher" makes it hard to use!

Thanks for any help.

Ron

This is a strange one all right.
Is this the only problem you are seeing? Something similar doesn't occur in Internet Explorer?
Probably the simple [but time consuming] way to get rid of the problem, would be to back up your data, format your hard drive and reinstall XP as a fresh installation.
I would think this is some sort of registry problem, but finding the error and correcting it would probably be even more time consuming and dangerous.

Thanks for the suggestion. But, frankly, I'd like to do something just a "wee bit" less drastic. Reformatting just seems like using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito.

Anybody have any suggestions on how to locate where in the Registry there might be an entry that would correct this problem?

Thanks.

Ron

You can search the registry for specific things such as a program. The problem here is knowing what to search for.
If you search the Microsoft data base for "file names not displayed", you get about 200 articles. Most of these have nothing to do with your problem [I looked at about 40 of them].
If you want, go to http://support.microsoft.com and try searching using the above entry and any refinements you can think up. Sometimes changing one word or the order of words will give much different results.
Another possibility is to reinstall Internet Explorer, since it and Windows Explorer are essentially the same program [That's why I asked if the same problem was happening in IE.].
Best of luck.