Trouble opening explorer

I had to reformat my laptop for a problem, but now whenever I try to open explorer it opens it in a search window. If I right click on drive C: for instance the "Search" function in in black and all the others including "Explore" are in lighter text. If I manually select "Explore" from this right click menu it will open properly. I've tried everything I can think of and it's driving me nuts. I've never seen this before. Can anyone help and save my sanity(what little is left).
Thanks
Floyd

 

This script should solve the problem:

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts_desc/xp_folder_open.htm

 

ABRAXAS,

Thank you, thank you. You saved my sanity. It worked as slick as could be.

Thank you again
Floyd