The central interface for most of the preferences, hardware configurations, and other settings in Windows Vista.

To open

Start -> Control Panel

Windows Explorer -> navigate to the Desktop\Control Panel folder (it's not available in the \Users\username\Desktop folder, however)

Search box or Command Prompt -> Control

Search box or Command Prompt -> filename.cpl

Usage

control [filename.cpl] [applet_name]  control [keyword]  filename.cpl

Description

The Control Panel has no settings of its own; it's merely a container for any number of option windows (commonly called applets or Control Panel extensions), most of which you can access without even opening the Control Panel folder. Unfortunately, the Control Panel can look vastly different from one computer to another, based on preferences scattered throughout several dialog boxes. Furthermore, the default settings vary, depending on how Windows Vista was installed. I'm making certain assumptions about your preferences. It's best to familiarize yourself with the various options described here so that you won't be confused when a setting in the Control Panel is referenced

There are several different ways to access the Control Panel and its contents:

Start menu

The way the Control Panel appears in the Start menu depends on several different settings, resulting in no fewer than five different possibilities.

If you're using the normal Vista Start menu, right-click on the Start button and select Properties. On the Start Menu tab, make sure that Start Menu is selected (if you've got Classic Start Menu selected, skip ahead a couple of paragraphs), then click Customize next to Start Menu. In the Control Panel area, there are three possibilities for display of the Control Panel. "Display as a link" opens the normal Control Panel when clicked. If you choose "Display as a menu," a right arrow will appear next to the Control Panel on the Start menu; click the arrow, and a list of all Control Panel applets appears as a menu. "Don't display this item" hides it on the Start menu altogether.

If enabled, the Control Panel entry appears in the second column in the Start menu.

If you're using the Classic Start menu, get to the Control Panel by selecting Start -> Settings -> Control Panel. The Control Panel will then appear in Classic View. You can instead have a cascading menu appear, with a list of all applets, when you select Start -> Settings -> Control Panel. To do this, when you're using the Classic Start menu, right-click on the Start button and select Properties. On the Start Menu tab, make sure that Classic Start Menu is selected, then click Customize next to Classic Start Menu. In the Advanced Start Menu options area, check the box next to Expand Control Panel. Then click OK, and click OK again.

Explorer

The Control Panel appears as another folder under the Desktop branch. Double-click the folder to display the Control Panel.

Command prompt

At any command prompt or the Start menu's Search box, type control to open the Control Panel. See the upcoming "Command-line usage" section for information on opening specific Control Panel applets from the command prompt.

Shortcuts

In addition to accessing a particular entry by first opening the Control Panel, it's possible to open a specific applet directly, either with a standard Windows shortcut or with one of the many links built into the Windows interface. For example, Folder Options is also available in the Organize menu of Windows Explorer, and Internet Options is available in the Tools menu of Internet Explorer. To create a standard Windows shortcut to a Control Panel applet, simply drag the desired icon from the Control Panel folder onto your Desktop or into any folder. Then double-click the icon to open the applet, skipping the Control Panel folder altogether.

Categories and navigation

The contents of the Control Panel are divided into discrete categories (System and Maintenance; User Accounts and Family Safety; Network and Internet; and so on). Click a category and you'll come to a group of subcategories. For example, click Appearance and Personalization, and you'll come to subcategories including Personalization, Taskbar and Start Menu, and Ease of Access Center, among others. Click any subcategory to either accomplish a task or see a list of applets.

As you navigate up and down through categories and subcategories in the Control Panel, the bread crumbs at the top of the Control Panel show where you are, including your complete path. You can jump anywhere back along that path by clicking it in the bread crumb. For example, if you're in the Personalization section, you'll see the bread crumb path of Control Panel -> Appearance and Personalization -> Personalization. To jump back to Appearance and Personalization, click it in the bread crumb trail; to jump to the top of the Control Panel, click it in the bread crumb trail. You can also use the arrow keys to the left of the bread crumbs to move backward and forward in the same way you can use them in Internet Explorer.

Once you move down into the category level in the Control Panel, you'll find links to all Control Panel categories on the lefthand side of each Control Panel window.

In addition to containing the icons for most of the standard Control Panel applets, the categories have additional links based on the task to be performed. Essentially, these links point to the same icons, only using different descriptions. The same holds true at the top level of the Control Panel.

Some people prefer the Classic view to the normal category view, because the applets are always presented consistently, no matter how the Control Panel is opened.

Regardless of the setting you prefer, it's important to understand the notation adopted throughout this article. For example, the following instruction shows the category name in square brackets (commonly used to denote an optional step or parameter):

Go to Control Panel -> [Appearance and Themes] -> Display

If you are using Control Panel categories, include the step in brackets; if you have categories turned off, ignore the bracketed step.

Control Panel changes in Vista

The Control Panel has been given a thoroughgoing redesign in Windows Vista. Categories have been added, taken away, and altered; navigation has changed with the addition of bread crumbs; it's now easy to jump from any level of the Control Panel to get directly to an applet; and the Control Panel offers a much more comprehensive way to perform tasks and customize Windows Vista.

That's the good news. The bad news is that under the hood, the Control Panel is now something of a mess. It's made up of a collection of category pages and applets that have accumulated through various versions of Windows. As you'll see shortly, in "Command-line usage," in some cases you can run an applet directly from the command line by typing the name of the applet itself. In other cases you can run an applet by typing in Control and then a keyword, such as telephony. And in yet other cases you can't run an applet from the command line at all. Making matters more confusing is that in some instances, running an applet from the command line leads to a traditional dialog box (such as main.cpl for the Mouse Properties dialog box), but in other instances it leads to a subcategory that is actually a folder along the Control Panel bread crumb path (such as powercfg.cpl, which leads to the folder/subcategory Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Power Options). The upshot? Like it or not, it may be easier to use the Control Panel itself rather than the command line for running applets.

Command-line usage

This section explains how to use control.exe from the command line. By command line, I mean the Address Bar or Start Search box as wellboth will accept commands. And you can also use filenames for creating Windows shortcuts to specific Control Panel applets.

The simplest way to create a Windows shortcut to a Control Panel applet is to drag the applet from the Control Panel onto the Desktop. When you do that, a shortcut will be automatically created. In this way, you can create a shortcut to any applet, even if the applet cannot be run from the command line.

Note that you cannot launch all applets from the command line; see the upcoming "Notes" section for a workaround. Control.exe supports two command-line methods (see "Usage," at the beginning of this section), but no method covers all applets.

Control.exe accepts the following parameters:

filename.cpl

The filename of the .cpl file (found in \Windows\System32) containing the applet you want to open. For example, type:

control main.cpl  

to open the Mouse Properties dialog. If more than one Control Panel applet is contained in the .cpl file, and the one you want is not the default, you'll need to specify the applet_name (discussed next) to open it.

applet_name, tab

The formal name of the applet you want to launch, spelled and capitalized exactly as described in the table below. This parameter is necessary only if more than one applet is contained in a given .cpl file. If you omit applet_name, the default applet in the specified .cpl file will be used. For example, type:

control main.cpl Keyboard  

to open the Keyboard Properties dialog. Note that the main.cpl file is the same file as the one in the previous example, but the use of applet_name allows applets other than the default to be opened.

For some tabbed dialogs, you can also specify the tab to open by including a space and then a comma after the .cpl filename (the preceding space is required), and then a number. Specify 0 for the first tab (or omit the tab completely), 1 for the second, and so on. This technique will even work for applets that lead to a User Account Control (UAC) prompt. For example, if you type control sysdm.cpl ,3 to try to open the System Properties window to the Advanced tab, you'll first have to go through a UAC prompt.

keyword

Keyword is an alternate way of opening a specific Control Panel applet from the command line. Instead of using filename.cpl and applet_name, simply include one of the following names: admintools, color, date/time, desktop, folders, fonts, international, keyboard, mouse, printers, schedtasks, system, telephony, or userpasswords

Notes

• The Control Panel has many more applets than those listed above but the ones in the table are the only ones that you can launch directly from the command line.

• Many applets in the Control Panel can't be launched from the command line using control.exe or by typing in the applet's filename. However, it's still possible to launch these (and any other) applets from the command line using a Windows shortcut. (Obviously, you can also launch the shortcuts by double-clicking them.) Simply drag the desired icon onto your Desktop or into a folder to create a shortcut. Then, to launch the shortcut from the command line, just type its full path and filename, including the .lnk filename extension. For example, to launch a shortcut named "Taskbar and Start Menu" (presumably linked to the applet of the same name), stored in your Stuff folder, type the following:

  \stuff\Taskbar and Start Menu.lnk

• Add Hardware, Infocard, and iSCSI Initiator are not listed in any category. Add Hardware launches the Add Hardware Wizard; Infocard opens an applet that lets you create an Infocard that will automatically log you into web sites; and the iSCSI Initiator lets you configure storage devices that use iSCSI connections. These applets are typically automatically launched by Windows Vista when you initiate a task that requires themfor example, adding new hardware.

• Some applications, software drivers, and hardware drivers come with their own applets, so you may have additional applets in your Control Panel that are not listed here. Also, depending on your version of Windows Vista, and any installed optional components, some of the items listed here might not be present in your Control Panel.