Recent Items Sorted in Start Menu

I am experiencing a problem where my 'recent items' are sorted alphabetically when I go to start -> recent items. I am unable to get them to sort by date , therefore defeating the purpose of this menu completely! I have tried to open the recent items folder and manually resorting which looks all good, alas the sort does not carry through to the start menu .....any ideas?

 

Hi In Vista - when I click on the start menu button (circle on the lower left hand side of the screen) and hoover over to the right in the grey area (just under the search menu item) there is a recent items button. If you hoover over it a list of the recent items appears, you can mange the # of itmes listed, I think I have mine set for 8. This list is sorted alpha numeric. The recent items folder where these links are stored contains much more than 8 links. The start menu is supposed to display the 8 most recent files / documents / pictures, etc. opened. My problem is that is just show the first 8 sorted items......

I also found this same scenairo reported on the microsoft forum - but have not seen a solution that works....
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/co...-15AF7EC6783B&dglist=&ptlist=&exp=&sloc=en-us

Any help in resolving this problem would be greatly appreciated!