click the (-) sign?, When you tell the computer you wnat to "explore" a
drive it assumes you want to see the contents so it will show the extended
tree, just click the minus and it will compact
The only way you could do that would be to right click-explore from onel
level up (which would be the my computer icon). It does not remember your
last setting so it is always going to show the drives as not expanded (+) .
also you will notice that the my computer is now a minus since that is what
you chose to explore, its the logic of the explore request.
Hopefully that gets you where you want to be