title: Where are positions of desktop shortcuts stored?
body: <p><strong>Where are the positions of Windows desktop shortcuts stored?</strong>  </p>
  
  <p>I am asking about the screen <em>positions</em> of the icons not the actual icons themselves. I know the icons themselves are stored in various DLLs, EXEs etc. The positions are clearly stored in some non-volatile store because they persists through re-boots.  </p>
  
  <p>My end goal is to write an app to display, and optionally re-arrange icons on my desktop.<br>
  I know this is possible because many available apps do this (e.g., "WinTidy").  </p>
  
  <p>I find much talk about "Windows Shell Bags". An interesting article about these are in <a href="http://williballethin.com.forensics/shellbags" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://williballethin.com.forensics/shellbags</a>, but that only addresses <em>directories</em> not shortcuts. These are in the registry at various places including </p>
  
  <pre><code>`HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Shell/Bags/1/Desktop`  
  `HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Shell/Bags/1/Desktop`  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I wrote a program to extract these but the format of the key values is incomprehensible.  </p>
  
  <p>Any body know where and how they are stored?</p>