Opening folders on drives in the Computer window

To open any of the drives or disks that appear in your Computer window so you can display the folders and files they contain, double-click its drive icon in the central area of the Computer window or right-click it and then click Open. (If you want to see the contents of the drive in a separate Explorer window, click Open in New Window instead.)

To collapse a category in the Computer window to temporarily hide its drive icons, click the collapse button (the one with the black triangle pointing downward before the category name). To later expand a collapsed category to once again display its hidden drive icons, click the expand button for the hidden category. (The expand button automatically replaces the collapse button and points directly at the category name.)

Formatting a disk

In this day and age, when floppy disk drives are almost never included in new computer systems, you might never experience the "joy" of formatting a floppy disk. Almost all the disks that you purchase today, including CDs and DVDs, come preformatted. (The formatting is done as part of the automated process that checks the disks for errors.) From time to time, you may want to reformat a prepared disk - especially a flash drive that you connect to your computer via one of its USB ports - that has become corrupted or that contains data that you no longer need. In very rare situations, heaven forbid, you may even have to reformat a hard drive on your computer.

To format a disk or computer drive, follow these steps:

1. When formatting a floppy, CD, or DVD, insert the blank disk or a disk that holds files and folders that you don't give a hoot about.
2. Open the Computer window (Start?Computer) and then right-click the icon of the drive that holds the disk (or that you want to reformat).
3. Choose the Format command from the shortcut menu that appears to open the Format dialog box.
   To format any hard drive on your computer, your user account must be an administrator type. You cannot, however, reformat the drive that contains the Windows 7 operating system (unless you're reinstalling Windows using the Windows 7 Install disc).
4. (Optional) Select the Capacity for the size of the disk that you're formatting.
   When formatting a floppy disk, choose the lesser (double-density) capacity 3.5", 720KB, 512 bytes/sector if you inserted that kind of disk into your floppy drive.
5. (Optional) By default, Windows XP selects NTFS (supported by Windows XP, 2000, Vista, and 7) in the File System drop-down list box as the file system for which to format the disk. If you're formatting a floppy disk for an older system running Windows 95, 98, or Me, select FAT on the File System drop-down list.
6. (Optional) Type a label in the Volume Label text box if you want to attach a name to the floppy, CD, DVD, or flash drive that you can use to identify it. When you format by using the FAT system, you're restricted to 11 characters; when you're using the NTFS system, you're limited to a maximum of 32 characters.
7. (Optional) Click the Quick Format check box in the Format Options (if you're reformatting a disk that contains files and folders that you no longer need). If you're formatting a brand-new disk, leave this check box empty.
8. (Optional) If you're formatting a floppy or CD as a startup disk for a MS-DOS computer, click the Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk check box.
9. Click the Start button to begin formatting the disk and then click OK in the alert dialog box warning you that formatting erases all data currently on the disk.

After you click Start and then OK, Windows keeps you informed of the progress in the Formatting box at the bottom of the Format dialog box. If you need to stop the process before it's complete, click the Cancel button.