Why does Windows XP Explorer Search sometimes switch to Icons view?

"How frequently do you Search? (I ask since you mention that as the source of the problem) Windows Explorer retains a fixed number of customizations.

TweakUI is one way to view/modify this value:

From the Microsoft Knowledgebase is this information for manually editing that value:

By default, Windows XP and Windows
Server 2003 remember each folder's
view settings and customizations. This
data is limited to 400 folders and is
stored in the following registry keys:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam


Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
instead use the following registry key
to store this information:


HKCU\Software\Classes\Local
Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell


To increase the number of folders that
Windows can remember the view settings
for, create a DWORD value named BagMRU
Size in each of these registry keys,
and set its value data to the number
of folders that you want Windows to
remember the settings for. For
example, if you set the value to 5000,
Windows can remember the settings for
5000 folders.

And lastly, this article discusses what to do when your ""view settings or customizations for a folder are lost or incorrect."""