C# – Drawing on the desktop background as wallpaper replacement (Windows/C#)

Windows Server 2003 and later (i.e. anything after Windows XP 32 bit) provide the where.exe program which does some of what which does, though it matches all types of files, not just executable commands. (It does not match built-in shell commands like cd.) It will even accept wildcards, so where nt* finds all files in your %PATH% and current directory whose names start with nt.

Try where /? for help.

Note that Windows PowerShell defines where as an alias for the Where-Object cmdlet, so if you want where.exe, you need to type the full name instead of omitting the .exe extension.

If you get the window handle of the desktop, you can create a new window and add your own custom window as a child of that. Putting it behind the list view may give you the result you need, though I'm not 100% sure how well the transparency will work.

Found some code - Most of what you need is in the first part if you don't need to deal with multiple screens that change shape.

    public void SetDesktopWindows()
    {
        Thread.Sleep(0);
        while (this.Count < Screen.AllScreens.Length)
        {
            OrangeGuava.Desktop.DesktopWindow.DesktopControl dtc = new OrangeGuava.Desktop.DesktopWindow.DesktopControl();
            User32.SetParent(dtc.Handle, User32.FindWindow("ProgMan", null));
            this.Add(dtc);

        }

        int minx = 0;
        int miny = 0;

        foreach (Screen screen in Screen.AllScreens)
        {               
            if (screen.Bounds.Left < minx) minx = screen.Bounds.Left;
            if (screen.Bounds.Top < miny) miny = screen.Bounds.Top;
        }

        for (int i = Screen.AllScreens.Length; i < Count; i++)
        {
            OrangeGuava.Desktop.DesktopWindow.DesktopControl dtc = (OrangeGuava.Desktop.DesktopWindow.DesktopControl)this[i];
            dtc.Hide();
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < Screen.AllScreens.Length; i++)
        {
            OrangeGuava.Desktop.DesktopWindow.DesktopControl dtc = (OrangeGuava.Desktop.DesktopWindow.DesktopControl)this[i];
            dtc.DeviceId = i.ToString();


            Rectangle r = Screen.AllScreens[i].WorkingArea;
            r.X -= minx;
            r.Y -= miny;



            dtc.SetBounds(r.X, r.Y, r.Width, r.Height);

            dtc.displaySettingsChanged(null, null);


        }

    }