I found a suggested fix (for the blank left pane in Windows Explorer) posted by "mosaic1" in a November 2001 thread. He said that the fix would not work if IE version 5.5 was installed, so I upgraded to IE 6.0, and, Lo and behold, the left pane was automatically restored. I just wanted to share this information with anyone who may have this "left-pane" problem with Windows Explorer.