MUST... Have... CONTROL!

Picture note - I keep my taskbar at the top of my screen, so that's why the screen shots look like they are coming from the wrong direction.

Do you use your control panel a lot? Are you the kind of person who is constantly "adjusting" things? Well, if you are, then you and I have a lot in common. Here's a tip that will save us both some time.

Rather than clicking Start, Settings, Control Panel then hunting for the appropriate icon in the control panel folder, why not put a cascading control panel right on your Start menu? Then, you just click Start, Control Panel, and select the appropriate utility from a menu. Much faster and much neater. Here's how for win 95/98/2000 (XP / ME are below):

1. Right-click the Start button and select Explore from the resulting menu.

2. By default, you'll end up in the Windows/Start menu folder. Right click on any blank area in the right pane and select New, Folder from the resulting menu.

3. A new folder will be created with it's name (new folder) highlighted. Paste the line below in for the name and hit Enter:

Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

Note that if you don't get it pasted properly and you end up with a folder named "new folder" you can re-name the folder with a right-click. That gives you another shot at pasting the above line in.

That's it. You should now have a Control Panel item available when you click your Start button. It should look like this:

If it doesn't work, make sure that you copied the line above exactly as shown. Your best bet is to do a copy & paste and not to type it.

XP/ME

If you're using Win ME or XP you have it even easier.

First, win ME:

To enable this, just click the Start button, Settings, Taskbar & Start Menu. From the resulting screen, hit the Advanced tab.

Now, look for the option called "Expand Control Panel". Check that, hit OK, and you have your cascading control panel.

Now, XP:

1. Right-click the Start button, Properties.

2. On the resulting screen, click the Customize button. On the next screen, click the Advanced tab.

3. The first item in the Start menu item box should be Control Panel. Select the little "Display as menu" item and poof! Ya have an XP version of our cascading control panel.

Posted in: System Management