If I recall correctly, these settings are only taken into account on 1st installation of the module (i.e. if there isn't an entry yet in the table {blocks} for this module-delta combination).
I have a theme that contains the region content_bottom. The region appears in the select boxes at admin/settings/block. I have a module that implements hook_block with:
function mymodule_block($op = 'list', $delta = 0, $edit = array()) {
switch ($op) {
case 'list':
$blocks[block1] = array(
'info' => 'Block 1',
'cache' => BLOCK_CACHE_GLOBAL,
'weight' => -1,
'status' => 1,
'visibility' => 1,
'region' => 'content_bottom',
'pages' => '<front>',
);
return $blocks;
and the block always appears in the disabled list. I tried using TRUE instead of 1 for status, which shouldn't make a difference, and didn't. The docs don't actually give an example of using region, other than saying you can, and a grep of 'region' starting at the document root in a module-laden sandbox seems to come up empty, so I'm not quite sure where to look.
Jeff