how do "personalized" folders *really* work

[carpeliam]

each windows-created folder within My Documents, for example "My Music" or "My Pictures", has a hidden Desktop.ini file with, among other things, something like this:

Personalized=39
PersonalizedName=My Pictures

Where exactly is it pulling the number 39 from? Is that in the registry somewhere, or is that a reference to a DLL (like how IconIndex references shell32.dll, for example)?

I looked at shell32.dll (where everything else seems to come from), but I don't see it there. If it is inside a DLL, can I successfully add a string to that DLL? Or would changing the DLL make Microsoft think that I'm hacking the OS, and either fail some sort of check or otherwise reset the DLL on me?

Not even MSDN seems to specify an API for the Desktop.ini file... It seems to be obscure and MS-specific.

I'm also trying to figure out how to do the same kind of thing with the "LocalizedResourceName" field... I know that it references shell32.dll, but I'd like to know if I will break my OS by simply adding a line of text in there.

Liam Morley
lmorley@wpi.edu
"light the deep, and bring silence to the world.
light the world, and bring depth to the silence."

 

[bcastner]

The details of desktop.ini are explained in detail in the Shell documentation.

In your case of "39" it is a reference to a the handler to be used from the default.htt:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...hell_int/shell_int_programming/std_ifaces.asp