I've done that, repeatedly. It doesn't work. It seems as if there is a default sort order somewhere for the desktop and I am not able to find it or fix it.
I'll try to explain this as well as I can. I save a lot of folders on my desktop. For the most part they are sorted alphabetically, from A to Z, with no problem. For the last several months, if something is named numerically, they are saved backwards. In other words, if I have files named 001...