Yes, and leave it to time to rob me of knowledge. I haven't written in a shell extension in around 10 years, and I'd forgotten that the desktop doubles as both a directory and a shell folder.
The class ID for Amiga Explorer is {1E0F3F10-3036-11D1-A4CF-00A0C94203AE}, and it's hook into the desktop namespace is triggered by the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{1E0F3F10-3036-11D1-A4CF-00A0C94203AE}.
When you tell Amiga Explorer to hide the desktop icon, it sets the following values, and then informs the shell its settings have changed:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\ClassicStartMenu]
"{1E0F3F10-3036-11D1-A4CF-00A0C94203AE}"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel]
"{1E0F3F10-3036-11D1-A4CF-00A0C94203AE}"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\ClassicStartMenu]
"{1E0F3F10-3036-11D1-A4CF-00A0C94203AE}"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel]
"{1E0F3F10-3036-11D1-A4CF-00A0C94203AE}"=dword:00000001
(EDIT: I don't know why the forum is adding spaces to the key names. At least, that's what it's doing in Chrome.)
When you tell Amiga Explorer to show the desktop icon, it sets the values to 0, and then informs the shell its settings have changed.
Even when hidden on the desktop, however, Amiga Explorer is always visible in a tree view of the desktop in Explorer.
With the class ID in hand, you can also create Amiga Explorer folders wherever you want using either the folder name "trick," e.g. Foo.{1E0F3F10-3036-11D1-A4CF-00A0C94203AE}, which isn't as pretty under Windows 7 as used to be in earlier versions of Windows, or a Desktop.ini file:
[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID={1E0F3F10-3036-11D1-A4CF-00A0C94203AE}
The parent directory, which you can call anything you want, and the child Dekstop.ini should have the system attribute set.
Trev