I found a way to set the default file view for the "Open" menu in ACAD. When you try to open a file in ACAD 2000i, the default view in is the icon view, and it won't follow the current windows view setting. The view mode is controled by the value "ViewMode" in the registry under:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R15.0\ACAD-1:409\Profiles\"username"\Dialogs\Select File
Set the value for ViewMode to "3" for list and "4" for details.
After doing this for a while, ACAD seems to rewrite the registry value to "1", changing the view back to icon view. Is there some way to lock a registry value?