In Windows XP (and likely 2000 and Vista/7 as well), you can set the desktop icons to have a drop-shadow effect, but it only seems to work if a wallpaper is configured. Having the wallpaper set to None turns the drop-shadow off. This is presumably due to an assumption that it is not needed against a solid color. While it true that the icon labels should be legible against a solid color, that does not negate the need/wish to have the drop-shadow to further smooth the the font in addition to ClearType.
Does anyone know of a way to force Windows to use the drop-shadow effect without applying a wallpaper?
(I already tried creating a blank wallpaper that is filled with nothing but a solid color of the background, and while it does work to force the drop-shadow, it will not suffice because it interferes with a program I wrote to force the translucent marquee/selection rectangle on the XP desktop. Therefore, I am looking for a shell-hook or something that bypasses Explorer and manually turns the drop-shadow on.)