Having difficulty with the top rows in my spreadsheet being frozen and not sorting

I am new to this forum and hoping that my fix will be easy and painless. I have a spreadsheet with 16 adjacent columns with numeric and text data. There are headings at the top of each column describing the data in that column. I sort the data in many of the rows in ascending or descending order to facilitate quicker data input. Once the data is input, I then sort numeric data to rank all the data in the rows accross that portion of my spreadsheet. There are formulas and functions in some of the cells referencing other areas of the spreadsheet. I have never had an issue sorting the data.

Just recently, the top 4 rows of my spreadsheet have locked up and won't sort, regardless of which column I attempt. The data in all of the rows below the top 4 rows sorts correctly. Have I inadvertantly protected or frozen these rows thus disabling the sort function? Perhaps somehow my sort function is looking at those 4 rows as if they are headers and thus not included in the sort?

I do updates on two different computers, one which runs excel 2007, and the other runs excel 2010. I am wondering if there is a compatability issue between the versions, or if there is something else. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for jumping in Paul. I am familiar with the freeze pane function, and it isn't frozen as I can scroll up and down without the top portion remaining visible. I also don't have any separators...all of the data in the columns all accross fail to sort those first 4 rows. I will attach it here if you want to have a look.

On my machine, the main leaderboard sorts all rows except places 1 through 4...I tried the names, the earnings, etc. and they all sorted fine past those first 4 places...which is line 9 on the spreadsheet.

Thanks for your assistance Paul. It turned out that under the sort and filter box, under custom sort, somehow the box became unchecked that my data had headers. Once I checked that box, it went back to normal. Thanks again.