Sometime recently when I did a “Save As” for any application or page in a browser, my sort order was reversed (See below). I let it go for a few days but finally it got a bit aggravating since, if you’re like me, you expect to see folders at the top and start to click impulsively. It was a bit frustrating to find the solution, even on Google. Anyway, I finally found an article and it appears to be an issue with the ShellState being corrupted. Oddly enough, the article only says it affects 95 and 98 but I’m on XP SP2 and this still occurred and the fix still worked.

Hope someone finds this useful and has less of a hard time finding the solution here than I did on Google.  Drop in a comment if you find it useful or Digg it.

I take no responsibility for modifying your registry. This is straight from Microsoft article “Contents of the Open and Save As Dialog Boxes Sorted Incorrectly” (previously in article Q233526) and you can click on their article if you’d like.
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To resolve this issue, set the ShellState value in the registry to the default value. To do so, use Registry Editor to view the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
If needed, edit the “ShellState” value to match the following value:
1C 00 00 00 A7 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00

NOTE: This value has been wrapped for readability purposes, it must be typed as one line. Also, you do not have to restart your computer for these changes to take effect.
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I didn’t have to reboot but my browser still showed incorrectly when I attempted to save the page, so you probably want to open NotePad (or your choice) and try to save something (a blank document) after you make the registry change, which I believe forces it to immediately re-read the ShellState.

If for some reason ShellState is not listed under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer:

1. Make sure the “Explorer” key is selected.
2. Right click in the list of values (right side) and click on New, Binary Value. Name it ShellState, press enter.
3. Double click on ShellState and you’ll get a blank dialog. There’s no cut and paste on this, so ensure you type it properly (not sure what happens if it’s not correct). Click OK.

Here’s what mine looks like. The values have changed since I updated it but at least it’s a reference point of what your dialog will look like if you’re editing it or adding a new entry.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 3:11 am and is filed under Other, Software, Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.