How to delete left pane in XP "Open" folder

In the XP Windows Explorer there's an option on the context menu called "Open."

The way it used to work was I would place my mouse pointer over a folder, right click and then click "Open." Then I'd see a new window show up with just the contents of that folder I had just clicked on. I find these stand-alone folder windows to be very handy for copying songs from my laptop onto my little armband MP3 player. I would open two windows side-by-side and then drag and drop songs from one window into the other.

But this morning I tried to change the icon for a desktop shortcut, and got an error message saying that before I would be allowed to change a shortcut icon. I had to enable some "feature", (I can't remember what it was called, but it had "folder" in the name) . I'd never run into that restriction before, and already had a lot of shortcuts on my desktop with personalized icons. But I clicked "OK" anyway and now regret it.

Because now the window that opens when I click "Open" on the context menu in Windows Explorer has a pointless additional pane on the left side that increases the total width of the window by about half again as wide as it used to be.

What is this new left pane called? It's mostly empty space and I'd like to remove it. It takes up way too much space on the screen of my little hand-me-down laptop and makes it difficult to display my two MP3 folders side-by-side the way I used to be able to do.

Is there a way to remove that useless left pane while preserving my ability to change the icons of of the shortcuts on my desktop?

Will in Seattle
a.k.a. "Clueless"

 

please take a screenshot of the useless pane so I can see what you are talking about.

what is in the pane?? is it the common tasks pane??

the exact error msg would be nice.

==

 

Do you mean this:



It opens with Windows explorer. It can be closed by clicking on the X I've circled.

As for opening in separate windows, Click Tools, at the top of the page, Click Folder Options, then move the tick to Open Each folder in its own window