The Desktop key contains entries that control the appearance of the screen background and the position of windows and icons on the screen. The following shows the Registry path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\DesktopTo change most of these entries, use the Desktop icon in Control Panel. The Desktop subkey can contain the following entries:
BorderWidth REG_SZ number
Sets the width of the borders around all the windows that have sizable borders. The possible range is 1 (narrowest) to 49 (widest).
Default: 3
CoolSwitch REG_SZ Boolean
Turns fast task switching on or off. To change this entry, choose the Desktop icon from Control Panel, and check or clear the Fast ALT+TAB Switching option in the Task List dialog box.
Default: 1
CursorBlinkRate REG_SZ milliseconds
Indicates how much time elapses between each blink of the selection cursor.
Default: 530
GridGranularity REG_SZ number
Specifies the size of the grid used to position windows on the screen. The possible range is 0 through 49, in units of 8 pixels.
Default: 0
IconSpacing REG_SZ pixels
Specifies the number of pixels that appear horizontally between icons. A larger number increases the space between icons.
Default: 75
IconTitleFaceName REG_SZ fontname
Specifies the font used to display icon titles. Change this value if the icon title is difficult to read.
Default: Helv
IconTitleSize REG_SZ number
Specifies the size of the font used to display icon titles. Change this value if the icon title is difficult to read.
Default: 9
IconTitleStyle REG_SZ Boolean
Default: 0
IconTitleWrap REG_SZ Boolean
Specifies whether to wrap icon titles. A value of 1 allows icon title wrapping and increases icon vertical spacing by three lines; 0 turns off icon title wrapping.
Default: 1
Pattern REG_SZ b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 b6 b7 b8
Specifies a pattern for the screen background. The 8 numeric values define a bitmap 8 pixels wide and 8 pixels high. Each decimal value represents a byte, and each byte represents a row of 8 pixels, where 0 sets the corresponding pixel to the background color, and 1 sets the corresponding pixel to the foreground color (specified by the Background and WindowText values in the Colors subkey, respectively).
For example, if you set the b1 value to the decimal value 175, the top row of pixels in the bitmap appears as the binary equivalent (10101111).
Default: (None) (This string appears when no pattern is specified.)
ScreenSaveActive REG_SZ Boolean
Specifies whether a screen saver should be displayed if the system is not actively being used. Set this value to 1 to use a screen saver; 0 turns off the screen saver.
Default: 0
ScreenSaverIsSecure REG_SZ Boolean
Specifies whether a password is assigned to the screen saver.
Default: 0
ScreenSaveTimeOut REG_SZ seconds
Specifies the amount of time that the system must be idle before the screen saver appears.
Default: 900
SCRNSAVE.EXE REG_SZ Filename
Specifies the screen saver executable filename.
Default: (None)
TileWallpaper REG_SZ Boolean
Specifies that the desktop wallpaper is tiled across the screen if this value is 1, or centered if this value is 0.
Default: 0
Wallpaper REG_SZ bitmap-filename
Supplies the filename for the bitmap on the screen background. Include the path if the file is not in the SystemRoot or SystemRoot\SYSTEM32 directory.
Default: "(None)" (This string appears when no pattern is specified.)