It seems the traders over at SteveHopwood's forum have already attacked this MT4 preload issue... I will check out all the solutions listed in this thread before proceeding with the AutoIt script. It would certainly be more elegant if we could actually get MT4 itself to retrieve the data. And then such a routine could even be added to Zorro's MT4 EA.

Edit: after researching this issue, I've found a solution that I'm very happy with and have now detailed it in the first post of this thread.