PartialOpen only refers to the current drawing you wish to open, PartiaLoad allows you to reselect a view or layers to show (on the already partialopen drawing)
How about LayerManager in express tools, you could save a list of layers you need Thawed/On, which of course isn't much good if your layer names vary from dwg to dwg or xref to xref.
It could be a handy thing to incorporate into the xref process. (Food for thought on creating a new xref program.)