Hi Matt,

Sometimes you'll change a folder view, its position, or one of the folder's
display options and upon rebooting the changes haven't been saved.

Method 1:
The first thing to do is go to Control Panel>Folder Options and under the
View tab make sure that 'Remember each folder's view settings' is ticked.

However even with this setting ticked you'll wind up with unsaved settings.
The way to fix this problem is to open Regedit and go to the following
sub-folders:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\BagMRU]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\Bags]

Right-click on each one (i.e. BagMRU and Bags) and select Delete to get rid
of both of them.

Reboot your PC and set up each of your folders as you like it. These
settings should now be saved and restored on the next reboot. By deleting
the registry entries above Windows is forced to recreate them and in doing
so get rid of corruption and bad entries, typically caused by third-party
programs.

If the above does not help, proceed to 2.......

Method 2 : Courtesy: Kelly Theriot - MVP

Windows [XP] remembers 400 folder settings. When that number is reached some
settings aren't retained any longer. You can change this to 8000 by adding
this edit to the registry.

Run this edit, then reset your preferred folder options:

Increase Folder View Options Limit: (Line 2):
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

To use the Regedit: Save the REG File to your hard disk. Double click it and
answer yes to the import prompt. REG files can be viewed in Notepad by right
clicking on the file and selecting Edit.

NOTE: The above procedure will not work for a "Common Dialog box" File >
Open > SaveAs dialogs.

When I select certain folder details (for a folder
containing .mp3 files) using View-Choose Details.  The
settings are reset to the defaults within a day or two.
This is annoying. I have tried several registry fixes, but
no luck.  Microsoft does not even show this a a bug in XP.

Help Please!

Delete the Registry keys
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags and
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU, both with
all the subentries, then create new keys "BagMRU" and "Bags" here. At
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam create a new
DWORD entry
BagMRU Size
and set this to
5000 (decimal)
Restart the computer.
This will erase the folder layouts that have been saved so far and
then increase the size of the cache for the folder layouts.