Returnil - registry - shutdown - desktop icons and wallpaper

re: coding / scripting / maybe batch file help to make automatic changes to Registry during boot and shutdown in Windows XP.


I have a request for help. I have a program installed called Returnil. I think it's great. It could be called a ISR (Immediate System Recovery) utility. It keeps my C: (system) partition protected in a neat way. When I reboot, my C: drive goes back to the way I saved it in (in a frozen state) shall we say. This program is freeware for personal use. Other programs that do something similar are DeepFreeze and ShadowDefender.

I have two other partitions on my hard drives, so only C: (Windows system) is "frozen". I have moved the desktop and "My Documents" to another partition, so I am allowed to store my personal data quite easily. I have also moved my IE favorites folder and my firefox profile folder off of the C: drive. When I reboot, though, C: drive goes back to the old image, which is great, because it makes it super easy to recover from any malware (virus, trojan, worm, etc.) or any poorly configured settings in Windows XP (Registry problems, etc.)

Although this configuration works quite well so far, I would like to make some improvements. There are just two other little settings that I would like to save thru the reboots. There is no way to configure Returnil to exempt certain parts of the C drive. This is a really simple program (2 MB program setup file) that really doesn't have many settings to configure. There are other programs of this type that allow one to pick folders or maybe files that are excluded from the protection or "freezing".

The two settings that I would like to allow to be changed:

Desktop icon positions.
Desktop wallpaper (background)

These setting are stored in registry, I imagine. This is what I've found so far:

for Desktop icon positions:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams\Desktop
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\1\Desktop
It seems that both of these registry keys have something to do with this setting. I don't know how these keys interact with each other. Another resource on this subject is that there is a utility that can be used (free download from Microsoft). This involves the file layout.dll, but I don't think this would be that helpful as far as I understand it.


For Desktop wallpaper setting, I don't know where this is in the registry, or even if it's in the registry, actually. I need help with knowing how these settings are stored.


My idea to preserve these settings thru a reboot: I would like some way to save these two settings to a path that is off of the C: drive. The way I see it, I could save these settings automatically at shutdown, and then have these settings loading automatically during boot time or logon time. This could be as simple as merging in some .reg files into the registry during boot, hopefully.

So I need of way of doing this with a batch file or some kind of script. I know that there are programs for saving desktop icon positions and recovering this configuration, and there are programs for changing wallpaper as well. Running 3rd party programs to interact with these settings may be of help, but this also seems complicated, as I would have to figure out how to configure them so that the settings that they store would be stored off of the C: system partition.

But I would prefer making a couple (or a few) batch files to perform these specific actions, so that system resources are not wasted, and so that I get a learning experience out of this whole thing.

I know that I've got several questions to be answered. Anyone interested in tackling this task? Thanks in advance to anyone who may be of help. Writing from a small town in British Columbia, Canada. (on dial-up internet!)
------------