I found it when I was searching with Google for information on a problem.
I can't remember was the problem was or if I solved it but I did find the forums and saw that I could help people with their computer problems so I stayed.
I would guess most found it the same way but I decided I would ask.

I googled Vista+Active Desktop+Bounty

me too got it from iGoogle

I found it thru HP. When I bought my desktop on black Friday, The HP Vista did not have Move to Folder.../Copy to folder... installed. I called the HP technical support and for once I had a lady helper (it's funny, but at HP only the ladies seem to know things). She got remote access to my system because she wanted to see for herself. Then she went to HTG to get it. I immediately noted the website since I could see everything she was doing with my system.

I think it was thru my service providers (Comcast,formerly AT&T) homepage.I think I typed a key word,"geek".Surfed thru various sites and found this to be among the best,especially the forums.

So far, I like whs's story the best... I should call HP and thank them for bringing whs to us =) Or maybe they should give me a free laptop for doing their job for them. Hmmmm

I created the site because I was really frustrated with all the other how-to sites out there. Even Microsoft's site has only instructions with words, so it makes the instructions difficult to follow along. I thought... why couldn't there be a site that was more like a book, and easier to follow? I started thinking of names for the site, and then was so shocked that howtogeek.com was available that I registered it on the spot. Within about 3 hours the site was up and running, and within about 4 days I was already getting visitors.

It wasn't until I stopped worrying about how many visitors I was getting and focused solely on writing good content that the site started to boom... about a year ago, I think.

The biggest problem is trying to make yourself write articles on a regular basis. It's just really, really tough.

I agree. I like whs's story the best too.
I also agree on the articles. I have the same problem at the moment. I want to write articles about things I have posted the answer to on the forum where a good How-To doesn't exist on HTG or elsewhere and I haven't quite got the regular basis thing down. Though trying to answering forum questions at the same time makes that tricky too.

It was a Google search that brought me here. I don't remember what I was searching for, it might have been the missing "Up One Level" button in Windows Explorer in Vista.

And I've learned a ton of stuff here and truly enjoy the company.

I just decided to check out Google Web History, which has been keeping track of my searches for a while now to see what I was searching for.
It appears I found the How-To Geek site by searching for Windows Vista Contacts Missing Icon.
I don't think I found the answer to that problem here but I did find many other great things.
That one was an odd problem, I think the icon on the Contacts folder did reappear but I can't remember how or why it did.