On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:51:41 -0500, Barry Bruyea
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:13:20 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:27:48 -0500, Barry Bruyea
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:10:13 -0000, "Tim Meddick"
wrote:

You could try to repair the file / folder associations for "Folder" and
"Directory" as offered by Doug Knox's website :

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/file_assoc.htm

...click on both the links for "Folder" and "Directory" which will start
downloading the zip-file in both cases, open them and extract their
reg-file contents and double-click on each to import the registry
settings...

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give it a try.

Tried this, but nothing change. The big mystery for me is that in
folders with many subfolders which in turn have more subfolders
some have the + sign beside them and others don't which, of course, is
the reason they don't open their subfolders.

I'm not sure why the folders continue to be a mystery...
Spill the beans already.

If I knew why, I wouldn't be posting asking the question. All I know
is that in spite of the suggested fix, folders with sub-folders
continue to be absent a + sign. When I click on them, they are shown
in the right hand panel of Explorer but no drop down list is shown
under them in the left hand panel. When pulling up the directory in
an application to determine where I want to save something all I get
is the lead folder with no +, ergo, I can't access the sub-folder to
save the file. (I am using XP3.)

Ok, I'll try my question a third time, because the answer matters.
What is the full path to the folder you're trying to open? It matters
because certain system folders exhibit a similar behavior like you're
seeing by design, so it would be very helpful to know if you're
playing with one of those folders or something else.

The mystery that I referred to is the fact that you've refused to clue
us in on which folder(s) you're talking about, like we should just
know what's on your screen. We can't see your screen.