Esoteric Explore.exe question

I'm hoping that one of you major, major geeks can tell me how to stop explore.exe from expanding the subfolders of my C: drive every time the program is started. The open folders are distracting and truly annoy me; and, it's a pain in the butt to close them each time so that the left-most column is less cluttered and easier to navigate.

I'm imaging that this is done within the registry; and, I don't have a problem with editing it, once I know what needs to be modified or deleted.

tia

 

Sorry...I meant Explorer.exe, not Explore.exe

 

Did a workaround by making a shortcut to explorer.exe and dragging that to the quick launch taskbar next to the Start button. Now I'm happy again (-: Should have done this 10 years ago <g>