Well, I have tried everything I could think of and still have no
luck.

I have NO linked products.

I found one product that had an error and deleted it.
I reloaded the entire product table, 11000+ products,
using EasyPopulate.

I reset the master categories ID and then updated the
price sorter. Same results. Some categories sort properly
but most do not.

I give up !

Thanks for the suggestions given.