HAS YOUR DETAILS VIEW LOST ITS COLUMNS?

Windows Explorer gives a customizable view of the files and folders on your computer or network. By default, when you highlight a folder in the left pane, you view the files and subfolders in the right pane. But these views can be customized by Detail, List, Large Icons, or Small Icons views using the Views menu.

If you select the Details view, you get Name, Size, Type, and Modified columns with details on each file and folder. Each column is resizable for information viewing preferences. It's also possible to (on purpose or by accident) drag each of the column width markers to the left edge of the pane--effectively making them disappear.

Once created, there is a way out of this blind view. Click in the empty right-hand pane and simultaneously press [Ctrl] and the plus sign (+) from the keyboard's numeric keypad. This sets the column widths back to the default minimum width.

In addition, you can fix the problem over a Win 9x client network if you have remote access to users registries. Locate the

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

key, and delete the DirectoryColsX subkey. This will automatically reset the column widths on the next startup of Explorer.