Programmatically Manipulating Taskbar Position in Win8

Question

Given:

1. I am on a windows 8 machine.
2. The taskbar begins at the top of the screen, I can't change this, unfortunately.
3. This is to be a piece for an automated process, so any solution which involves user interaction isn't feasible in this case.

Goal: To get the taskbar to the bottom of the screen.

Preferred Solution Languages: PS, Batch, C#, C++

In windows 7 this was as simple as turning explorer on and off, which would set the taskbar back to its default position at the bottom of the screen. In Win8 it apparently saves user settings for UI (probably for metro's sake), so when explorer is turned off and on everything is right where it was when explorer quit, including the taskbar.

I tried the following registry change as well, but nothing fruitful came of it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects2] "Settings"=hex:28,00,00,00,ff,ff,ff,ff,02,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,3e,00,00,00,2e,\ 00,00,00,00,00,00,00,82,04,00,00,80,07,00,00,b0,04,00,00

I'm hoping that there is a clean solution to this. Perhaps I've been searching for the wrong terms but I haven't found anything.

A solution in any language is acceptable, but I can't install third party software in this case. Calling a file from elsewhere in the network is fine - but installing, unfortunately, cannot be done.

I'll continue to research this, and if I find the answer I'll post it here.

Answer 1

I think this is the simplest way:

REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects2" /v "Settings" /t REG_BINARY /d 28000000ffffffff02000000030000003e00000028000000000000008804000080070000b0040000 /f
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe & explorer.exe

It sets all the taskbar settings (including the location) and simply restarts the explorer. Note that you might want to use your value instead of mine, just make sure the 12th byte is 03.