Shortcut to the Desktop

[jotong]

I just bought a new t42 that runs XP, and on my old machine, which ran Windows 2000 pro, there was a little row of buttons on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, next to the Start menu. One of these buttons was a shortcut to the windows desktop. It was very handy when I had a lot of windows open, and wanted to quickly access something on the desktop without having to minimize all the windows. Is this feature available in XP, or is there a keyboard shortcut to do the same?

Also, in XP, when there are too many windows open in one app, they're all condensed into one bar for that app on the bottom toolbar. In previous versions of Windows, the bars would just get smaller in size to squeeze them all in at the bottom of the screen. Is there a way to switch back to the old non-condensing method?

[jdhurst]

Right click on the taskbar, select Properties and enable "Show Quick Launch". In the next Tab over in this Properties windows, you can also select the Classic Start menu. In My Computer -> Properties, you can turn of the Visual Effects. ... JDHurst

[Humpa]

Also, in XP, when there are too many windows open in one app, they're all condensed into one bar for that app on the bottom toolbar. In previous versions of Windows, the bars would just get smaller in size to squeeze them all in at the bottom of the screen. Is there a way to switch back to the old non-condensing method?

Right click on the taskbar, select Properties and uncheck "Group similar taskbar items"