All of a sudden, the file open/save dialog on my home system went wacko...
rather than displaying the normal icons on the left hand side, it was displaying very strange stuff.
Once again, Google came to my rescue.
Using the following search string: change windows file dialog
I found PuPpYpc.com which provided a detailed, and easy, fix to the problem. The article actually provides instructions on how to customize the placesbar, but it also gave me the information I needed to identify and fix my particular problem, which was that the entire CURRENT_USER\Software\
Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\comdlg32\PlacesBar has vanished from the registry! They even provide a really cool little applet at the bottom of the page to allow you to point and click you way to a customized places bar if you're shy about hand editing your registry. Anyway, here's a link to the page if you're interested.
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