J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

I _NEVER_ want the large icons view - I want "details".

From time to time - difficult to pin down a common cause - I end up with
an icons view, especially if I've looked at one of the top-level
pseudofolders, such as "My Documents". Trouble is, if I drill down from
there to - well, for example, currently
D:\genealog.y\PETER\!pending\Gilliver - the view _remains_ on large
icons.

Any suggestions, other than live with it? I know about Make All Folders
Like This One, and so on - doesn't work (at least not for ever).

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813711

I upped mine to 8000. Note that I've seen this data item's name
referenced as "BagMRU Size" and "Bag MRU Size". I've added both since
whichever is the wrong one won't have an effect.

If you don't want to edit the registry, use the TweakUI powertoy for
Windows XP (under the Explorer - Customizations tree node) to alter the
value. That modifies the the "Bag MRU Size" (with space between "Bag"
and "MRU") data item in the registry hence why I have both data items
defined there. Microsoft says "BagMRU Size" into the KB articles but
TweakUI and other tweakers create and modify "Bag MRU Size".

Note that increasing this cache size merely extends how long before
customizations get lost. If you have more than 8000 folders than
increase this value further. I don't know what is its max value but I'm
sure there is one (after all, DWORD values in the registry can have up
to a max of 8 hexidemcal digits for a max value of FFFFFFFF hex or
4,294,967,295 decimal).

When I run "cd /d c:\" and then "dir /ad /s" in a command shell (aka DOS
prompt), the total directory (folder) count is over 21,000. Yet I've
not noticed loss of folder customizations after upping the count to
8000. That's probably this value only applies to customized folders and
I haven't done that much that I can recall.