August 2003
Beginner
416 pages
12h 47m
English
Content preview from Windows XP HacksBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Control the Control Panel
Whether you’re a fan of the new Control Panel or not, there’s a lot you can do to make it more palatable—like hiding applets you never use, re-categorizing the ones you do use, and displaying all applets in a simple-to-use cascading menu.
When I first started using XP, one of the things that annoyed me most was its new Control Panel. Yes, the big new icons for running applets are certainly pretty, but the Control Panel’s several-layer organization forces you to click far too many times in order to get to the applet that you want. And its clutter of applets that I rarely if ever use make it even more difficult and confusing.
My first reaction was to click on the Switch to Classic View button, to do away with the new design, but the Classic View has its problems as well: its long, alphabetized list of thumbnails is just as difficult to navigate as the new Control Panel.
The solution? Start by cleaning up the Control Panel, hiding applets that you rarely if ever use. Note that when you hide the applets, you can still use them; you just won’t see their icons in the Control Panel.
In this hack, you’ll not only find out ways that you can control the Control Panel—you’ll also see how you can apply that knowledge to create different customized Control Panels.
Hide Unused Applets with the Registry
To hide unused applets using the
Registry, run the Registry Editor [Hack #68] and go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\don't ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.