What happened to the good old desktop patterns?

Wow, and here I thought those things were all but forgotten, and I was the only one who had tried to restore them. Unfortunately, my attempts thus far have proven to be unsuccessful. Let's have a look at the obstacles here:

1 - There is no built-in UI setting to enable them
This actually isn't that big of a deal, as they can still be enabled using desk.cpl Windows 2000 Beta build 1585 (the same way ClassicTheme.exe provides an option for changing classic theme colors). This works perfectly on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and they can be re-enabled on those operating systems using this method.

2 - The patterns themselves don't exist in newer versions of Windows
This is another super easy obstacle to overcome. Patterns are stored in the registry, specifically under the [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Patterns] key. Simply export this key from an older version of Windows, and import them to the registry of a newer version.

3 - They're broken in newer versions of Windows
This is by far the biggest hurdle, and all of the other things we've done are ultimately pointless because of this. It seems that Microsoft has either broken or simply removed the functionality to support patterns. I HAVE gotten them to somewhat work on Windows 7, however they are extremely broken, and look nothing like the patterns I was trying to apply to the desktop.

For Example, here is what 50% Gray looks like on Windows 7:

As you can see, it looks nothing like it should. An interesting thing to note is that the dots seem to change position when desktop icons are clicked or moved.

On top of that, getting all of them to apply has proven to be inconsistent at best. Some patterns don't even appear at all, while others (generally the ones with more "filled" pixels, yet completely filled patterns don't seem to work at all) yield the same or similar results as seen in the image. And that's just Windows 7. Windows 8.1 doesn't seem to even attempt to apply them.

It would be kind of neat to re-enable them, but I haven't figured it out thus far. Maybe they'd work with better a different shell, but as of now I haven't really tested that yet.

insert code hereJust putting this here.

Beware last time I tested this on Windows 7 I had trouble turning it off again...


Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Patterns]
"(None)"="(None)"
"50% Gray"="170 85 170 85 170 85 170 85"
"Boxes"="127 65 65 65 65 65 127 0"
"Critters"="0 80 114 32 0 5 39 2"
"Diamonds"="32 80 136 80 32 0 0 0"
"Paisley"="2 7 7 2 32 80 80 32"
"Pattern"="224 128 142 136 234 10 14 0"
"Quilt"="130 68 40 17 40 68 130 1"
"Scottie"="64 192 200 120 120 72 0 0"
"Spinner"="20 12 200 121 158 19 48 40"
"Thatches"="248 116 34 71 143 23 34 113"
"Tulip"="0 0 84 124 124 56 146 124"
"Waffle"="0 0 0 0 128 128 128 240"
"Weave"="136 84 34 69 136 21 34 81"

If you have trouble turning them off, try deleting "Patterns" in [HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop]. I noticed it's a bunch of garbled, unreadable characters when I apply a pattern in Windows 7. However changing it to the name of the pattern you want doesn't seem to do much aside from maybe applying the pattern in a slightly different type of broken way.