Some people like to navigate windows with each window replacing the one it was opened from, others like to "drill down", so there is only one window left to close.
For years I longed for the ability, as on a Mac, to over-ride one behaviour in favour of the other, on a case-by- case basis.
I was fairly delighted, then, when our IT guru casually pointed out that, at least in Win2k and XP, holding down the Control key temporarily reverses the behaviour, both when going down into the tree, and when coming back up.
He also showed me a couple of groovy things about the icon at the VERY top left of each Windows window.
1) To search the current folder, or get properties on it, it is not necessary to first go back up the tree one level (for which action, incidentally, a not-terribly-widely-known shortcut is to hit "Backspace" key). Instead, simply RMB on the aforementioned icon and choose the action to perform on the entire folder. 2) If you can't get at the Close icon at top right, simply double-click on the top left icon. Minimise is available on the RMB menu.