01fxdl

I think I found the answer! Have been looking everywhere since getting a new laptop w/XP recently and this was frustrating, knowing I keep my folder views on flash drives on the office laptop which is also running XP. Every place I searched talked about that fool 400 folder limit in the registry and I knew that had nothing to do with it - since I hadn't opened but a dozen folders. All C:\ drive folders were fine, but on the flash drive, even after changing the view to details, if I went to another folder on the flash drive and back to the one I changed the view on, it still went back to system default. Erik's post above re: local drive was a clue. I believe XP may be keeping the setting by drive type, and if you pick "apply to all folders" while in your C: drive, it may only set for local drives. 1) Try setting from Desktop first. Open in Windows Explorer (I don't use My Computer) - and select Desktop, then Tools/Folder Options. Change your general and folder view settings as desired (I want details, don't hide anything) and hit the Apply to All Folderrs button, then OK. Check your flash drive. If it didn't keep the settings, try going to My Computer and under the View dropdown, expand 'Arrange Icons by' and un-check 'Show in Groups', change your view etc, then try procedure above again, by going to Win Explorer, selecting Desktop in Explorer, then modify the folder options and click 'Apply to all folders' again. I actually changed the 'show in groups' setting on My Computer first, then fixed the folder options when having Desktop selected. But I don't think the 'arrange icons' setting is really relevant. I think setting the folder view / apply to all when having Desktop selected is the key. It is keeping my flash drive settings just fine. I even went back into My Computer and changed the arrange icons setting back to 'show in groups' again (which it's keeping), and still my flash drive is showing 'Details' in folder view. woohoo. p.s. the flash drive is still a removable drive (I did NOT make it a local drive as Erik suggested). And I still use the 'Safely remove hardware' feature to stop the drive and then remove it. I also put in another flash drive after stopping/removing the first one, and the folder view settings remain. Obviously, you need to select the 'remember each folders settings' still, and the 400 folder limit may still come in to play at some point (not an issue for me to date). And you can then go on to modify settings on certain other folders - for instance in Control Panel - I have to see that in Icons - I can't view that in 'Details' view...