Vista folder date sort anomaly

[pendle]

I've just noticed a strange anomaly in the way folders are sorted by date (Vista Home Premium).

My folder default is set to "Details", showing four columns Name, Date, Size, Type.

Mostly I need to view a folder by date, newest first. So I click on the date header, and this toggles between newest first, and oldest first.

This works fine for most of my folders.

But some do not sort by date, they sort by what appeared initially to be a random order, but which is actually the following bizarre combination:

Folders first, sorted by the date as if it were a text string;

Files next, also sorted by date as if it were a text string.

Date sorted as if it were a text string means that I get the 31st of any month or year at the top, then the 30th and so on. So 26/07/11 will appear to be later than 25/08/12.

How can I eliminate this strange behaviour? It does not apply to any new folders I make. I don't want to have to make new folders all over my machine and laboriously copy contents from old to new folders.

[MANEMAN]

Hi. I'm thinking you could have registry corruption as your problem.

Try this link to a tutorial that may help: http://www.vistax64....w-settings.html

But if possible find a system restore point to a time before this started to happen first.

If it is registry corruption it could be quite a swine to track down. Sometimes a backup of important data and then an operating system re-install is the quickest path, although there is a tool available that will refresh system settings.

http://www.xp-smoker.../refreshpc.html ( It can be used for Vista and Windows 7 also )

Be prepared to re-install software programs if you use this tool, and do use with caution.

Before making any changes to your computer do a data backup, and make sure that you have researched your current problem as well as you can ( Google, etc.)

With some of these problems there are as many solutions as you can shake a stick at.