In tip 4538, I explained how to use the Desktop Cleanup Wizard.
In tip 5181, I explained how to manually disable it.
To configure or disable the Desktop Cleanup Wizard using the registry:
1. Use the registry editor to navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\CleanupWiz.
2. To disable the wizard, edit or add the NoRun Value Name, a REG_DWORD data type, and set the data value to 1. To enable the wizard, set the data value to 0.
3. To alter the number of days between automatic desktop cleanup, edit or add the Days between clean up, a REG_DWORD data type, and set the data value to the number of days, using the Decimal radix.
NOTE: If you wanted to create a .reg file to enable the wizard and set the number of days to 31:
REGEDIT4
\[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\CleanupWiz\]
"Days between clean up"=dword:0000001F
"NoRun"=dword:00000000
