I found this information somewhere in the bowels of the Microsoft Knowledge Base. An anonymous reader sent me a beautiful tidbit on the Explorer. If you drag the My Computer icon onto the Start button, it will be placed in the Start Menu and each folder will show and expand automatically to reveal branches of all folders. This will extend down to each individual file. It is easy to do, and if you don't like it, delete the item by right-clicking and selecting Delete.
Communication is the toughest part of computing.
To lower the level of the sound of your modem, you need to give it one of the Hayes commands. Hayes was one of the pioneers in the field of modems, whose company went belly-up. He established a series of modem commands which were adopted by all his competitors. The sound level can be changed without rebooting, but for full quieting, restarting the computer may be necessary. You can test the sound by using the Phone Dialer program.