I keep my Explorer View setting on Details. -- When setting my system up, I open an Explorer window, set View to Details, and then in Tools->Folder Options on the View tab I click [Apply to All Folders]. This generally ensures that I see the Details view everywhere I go, including in Search.
Yet sometimes when I run a Search it spontaneously switches back to Icons view. I've seen this problem for years across many different computers running Windows XP. Weeks can go by with no problem, and then blam, Icons again. And when it happens it keeps happening, even though I go back and redo the above configs. How can I prevent this rogue behavior?
(I typically start searches by right-clicking an Explorer folder and picking Search.)