R.Wieser wrote:

How do I get Windows to drop all kinds of fancy sorting rules and
revert to (something like) ASCII order

A lot of behaviors in Windows Explorer are hard coded (well, all of them
are but I mean in that you don't get any options to remove some of the
unwanted behavior). It will show .zip files as folders (unless you
deregister the zipfldr.dll). It will handle some "special" folders
differently; for example, as I recall, navigate to C:\Windows and double
click on the Fonts folder. It won't show the contents of the Fonts
folder within Windows Explorer but instead opens the font manager
dialog.

Perhaps a non-Microsoft file manager would provide more sane sorting;
e.g., FreeCommander, MultiCommander, Explorer++ (all freeware). There
are free editions of crippled paywa Xplorer2 Lite, XYplorer Free,
Directory Opus Light. I have not used any of them. Folks in the
alt.comp.freeware newsgroup might have some experience with them. Users
that don't like the behaviors or deficiences of Windows Explorer often
use a replacement.