Apply templates to subfolders doesn't work

[mechatom]

I have a lot of subfolders in the already created My Pictures folder. Since I can't use customization on that folder, I go in and try to apply templates to the next largest folders inside. I set the template to Pictures and select the "Also apply this template to all subfolders" box. This changes the template setting in every subfolder to Pictures, but nothing else. Though they are labelled as Pictures, they still appear in list view (instead of Thumbnails, which is the main reason I want them as Picture template). In fact, the only folders that change to Thumbnail appearance are those that have been hand selected to "also apply to all subfolders". As I've probably been rambling, I'll sum up: select templates as Pictures: nothing happens; select template as Pictures and apply to all subfolders: only the next level down appears as thumbnails and everything below it is still in list mode. How do I get all these folders in thumbnail mode? (and dont say manually, i took 20 minutes to do that, and in the end, every other folder on the C: decided to go to thumbnails as well, so I had to reset the whole drive to go back to list mode). Please help!