How to write Windows registry script?

Is there a solution to set user account pictures from the Active Directory thumbnailPhoto attribute in Windows 8/8.1 with a login script?

• (not Windows 7!) It is frustrating to IT people like myself to witness how Microsoft is giving us all the cold sholder in this matter. The very useful thumbnailPhoto property in the Active Directory is an obvious source for the user account picture, and it is a nice service touch by the IT departments to be able to provide our users with an automatic employee image at the workstation. So why is Microsoft denying us this possibility in Windows 8? Some clever people found a way to do this in Windows 7, see http://msitpros.com/?p=1036 for instance. In windows 8 we have a new object, the User Account Pictur object which apparently can contain a small image, a large image and a video! There is a way to access and set these properties - but only for Store APP programmers, see http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/Account-picture-name-sample-912baff1. The Accout Picture object is kept in %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\AccountPictures as a blob file with a 16-byte system-generated name that can be seen in the Registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AccountPicture\SourceId, but I haven't seen any method for programmatically importing images into this blob, a method, that is, which could be used in a login script. So, Microsoft, please get cracking and deliver! Meanwhile we wait with a loyalty which is in serious danger of diminishing....

• Answer:

  This script does the trick: http://msitpros.com/?p=1036#comment-158887