Picture and Fax Viewer displays images out of order

[Guest]

Until recently, the Windows Picture and Fax viewer on my XP Home machine
would display images in whatever order I selected in Explorer. That is, if I
organized a folder by "date file modified" or "date picture taken" then
switched back to thumbnails and then opened an image in the Viewer, the order
in which they were displayed by hitting the "previous image" or "next image"
buttons in the Viewer was the same as Explorer's organization.

But now something seems corrupted. The Viewer will now only display images
"by name" -- alphabetically or numerically -- even if they are organized
differently in the folder. In fact, sometimes I think they might just be
random. It's hard to tell. But it is clear that they are not advancing in the
order selected in Explorer.

I've tried everything I can think of, and searched the internet for
solutions, but so far, no luck.

I'm hoping someone out there has had this problem and figured it out! Please
help.

Short of fixing it, is there a way of removing the Viewer from XP, then
re-installing it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Stephen]

[unofficial] Just an idea:

Have you tried things like switching the "view" from say, Thumbnail, to say,
Detail then hitting "Refresh" [ F5 ] then switching back to Thumbnail
again? Sometimes just hitting refresh is not enough. One has to change the
view first. This might put the viewer back to showing in the order you
intend.

 

[Guest]

Stephen,

Yes, I tried that (and did it again after your suggestion), and still it
advances only in alphabetical order.

Thanks for the idea anyway!

[unofficial] Just an idea:

Have you tried things like switching the "view" from say, Thumbnail, to say,
Detail then hitting "Refresh" [ F5 ] then switching back to Thumbnail
again? Sometimes just hitting refresh is not enough. One has to change the
view first. This might put the viewer back to showing in the order you
intend.

 

[Guest]

OK -- I found a fix myself, after two days of Googling! I'm posting it here
so that if anyone ever runs a search because they're having the same problem,
they can find the solution.

Apparently Windows saves the order in the registry at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer
Shellstate=

You can either edit the registry, or try this simple fix first. Open a
directory (folder) in Windows Explorer. Hold down the control key, then close
the directory (click the X in the upper right corner). This forces Windows to
update the Shellstate=.

Hope this helps someone else out there!

 

[Stephen]

I'm about to keel over that someone who posted a question actually posts
back the answer when he finds it. Good work.

 

[Guest]

Ooops -- I forgot to say what the registry edit is. Just naviaget to the
registry entry below, and delete Shellstate=, then exit the regedit program.
This will force Windows to reconstruct the shellstate.