Vista - Folder customization gone crazy

I am scanning a large collection of old slides, and organizing them into
folders by topic and date. To help keep track of things, for several
folders I selected Properties / Customize / Folder Pictures and Choose
pictures and chose a representative image from within that folder. That
worked OK.

But next day when I went back to some real work I discovered that random
folders all over the rest of the system had those images inserted as the
folder image. There didn't seem to be any pattern as to which folders had
the images, or which image was applied (except, possibly, that each image
was used only once). I don't think any of the folers that I had selected
for a customised image were affected, but of course I have to check each one
in turn to be sure, as I was using the image and not the folder name to
indicate the contents. I now have to remove all the images from the folders
that they shouldn't have been associated with, which is a large job,
expecially as some of them seem very reluctant to go back to the default,
whether I choose to restore default or change the icon, choose Apply or just
OK, refresh the display or whatever.

I need to find out how to stop this random assignment of images to other
folders, so I can continue to apply the images in my slides folder without
being concerned that they will suddenly appear elsewhere.

I also need to know how to revert these stubborn folders back to a plain
icon - the worst case seems to be a shortcut where I don't seem to have
permisssion to do anything, including change persmissions. I don't want to
go adjusting ownership of all these folders just to get the folder display
back to what it was before I started this customizing.

It gets siller. For instance, the folder \Program Files\Canon, which was
created a long time ago during the installation of software for a Canon
scanner, has now been updated with an image I attached to the customized
folder <username>\Pictures\Charts\3318 which happens to be a chart of the
entrance to Papeete. I cannot find any way to reset the Canon folder to its
default or to any other image. Any attempt to make a change is simply
ignored. Can someone please advise how I can remove this unwanted
customization from a folder in Program Files?

And how to I prevent changes I make to the customization of folders in
....\Pictures from appearing at other random folders throughout the system?

"James Hahn" <jhahn@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uKSDx6IDJHA.5060@xxxxxx

Hello James Hahn,
I have the exact same problem with my Vista folders. I've done lots of
research but couldn't find a complete solution. Microsoft Customer Support
have not been able to find a solution either. Have you learned yet how to fix
this?

Thank you,
Eli

"James Hahn" wrote:

No fix found yet. The problem has been controlled to some extent by
removing the old Bags registry entries left over from XP. That cleared a lot
of the existing incorrect applications, but it hasn't stopped new ones from
appearing. And I now realize that since I only view a relatively small
number of folders in icon mode, the problem is probably a lot worse than I
am seeing.

"dis" <dis@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5C1E78F1-9451-41FE-A3A8-40B5223D272E@xxxxxx