Hi kl522
My apologies on two fronts - paragraphs were there when i wrote post but when submitted they somehow then disappeared - i don't know how to fix this so the same may occur this time.

Re PCMANFM - I spoke/posted too soon and find I have possibly even made it worse (by my install of extra LXDE packages, probably) by now having 2 versions of pcmanfm.conf - but both are still being overwritten at each new boot by the incorrect setting of "sort_by=0" (should be "sort_by=2" as the sourceforge post identifies). So I am just as much lost as I was before - or perhaps worse, sorry. Hope some one else can solve this one, please.

Best wishes, John