I don't think I understand your logic, Glenn.
Enabling the Quick Launch toolbar cannot be done by writing to the registry. For that, ToggleQL.exe can be used.
But because that works bad from time to time, I try to find an indication that the Quick Launch Toolbar is not enabled.
If I understand your third post, you say to only check the 18th character in the value for TaskbarWinXP (the 18th character is not the last character).
What I wanted to know is if it is right to presume that this char is always 2 when the Taskbar is disabled in Windows XP.
;Script Options
$SO=SETOPTION("Explicit", "ON")
$SO=SETOPTION("NoMacrosInStrings", "ON")
$SO=SETOPTION("NoVarsInStrings", "ON")
$SO=SETOPTION("WrapAtEOL", "ON")
BREAK ON

DIM $TaskbarWinXP
DIM $Enabled

If @DOS = "5.1"
    ; $TaskbarWinXP = ReadValue('HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams\Desktop','TaskbarWinXP')
    $TaskbarWinXP = ReadValue('HKEY_USERS\'+@SID+'\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams\Desktop','TaskbarWinXP')
    $Enabled = SubSTR($TaskbarWinXP,18,1)
    Select
    Case $Enabled = '2'
        ? 'disabled'
        Shell '"%ComSpec%" /C "'+@LSERVER+'\NETLOGON\toggleql.exe" 1'
    Case $Enabled = '3'
        ? 'Enabled'
    Case 1
        ? 'This is just impossible, you will never get here'
    EndSelect
EndIf