Yes, you were right Frank! My firewall program prevented the layout changes.
You can add to your list F-Secure Internet Security 2007. I disabled the
Spam control from FIS2007 temporarily, made the layout changes in OE, and
changes were kept when restarted OE again. I switched FIS2007 SPAM control
again, and saving OE layout changes was not possible anymore.

In many threads of this forum, it has been recommended NOT to use SPAM
control of firewall product with statement "does not add value". I disagree;
now when I know the my firewall product is preventing preview pane to be set
on by malware or by myself accidentally, I consider that a good value. Of
course the negative value is, that I had no clue this would be the reason for
not allowing me to control my OE layout as well.

I'll report to F-Secure support to either solve the problem or at least
guiding the user more what are the impacts of using SPAM control addition to
obvious SPAM control. I'd guess, the problem also applies FIS2008 version.

For other FIS2007 users: you don't need to disable whole FIS2007, just
disable temporarily the SPAM control and enable it back after having made
your OE layout changes.

Thank's Frank for helping me to solve this problem. How did you know this?
Is there a Microsoft knowledge base article about it?

br: Kimmo

"Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM" wrote:

It might be a security program blocking the Registry change it needs to
make. A few, but not all, of the programs now doing this a
Ad-aware's Ad-Watch
IBM Access Connections
Kaspersky
McAfee VirusScan and/or Antispyware
Norton AV
Spyware Blaster
Spybot Tools IE Tweaks
Spybot- Teatimer
Spysweeper
Spyware Doctor
Windows Defender
Zone Alarm (free) 6.5 Reported to be fixed in later versions.

In the case of Zone Alarm 6.5 or Norton 2007 it actually has to be
uninstalled. Make sure the Windows Firewall is turned on until you
reinstall Zone Alarm.

Boot into Safe Mode with Networking and try the change.

--
Frank Saunders MS-MVP IE,OE/WM
www.fjsmjs.com
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