Windows Control Panel Part 1

What a scary place, the Control Panel is a forbidden place to some. Only techies understand and use it. It is meant for advanced PC users and really some people don't know what is it for and how to use it. You maybe know where to get great facebook apps or maybe create excellent myspace layouts, but you don't know how to setup your internet connection and you have to call your friends when it disappears.

All computer users should familiarize with the control panel the first time they use a PC. The Windows Control Panel is very simple to use and easy to understand, most of the icons and tasks are just shortcuts to your display settings and properties, your internet settings, sound settings and so on...

We would like to cover some parts of the Control Panel that we think everyone should know how to use. And there are many tips to mention on this subject so we will split this post in to two parts, don't even think of not reading both of them.

You can find Control Panel usually in Other Places on your left side of My Computer window. You can set it to show up in your start menu by right-clicking somewhere in on the start menu, selecting properties. This will bring up Taskbar and Star Menu Properties, we have to click Start menu Customize... this will bring up another properties window, select the advanced tab. You will see "Start menu items:" the very first one is the Control Panel, click the Display Link radio button and click OK to close all windows. You can of course explore all the items that you can add and remove from your start menu and read on this blog when you are finished.

Now go ahead and click Control Panel in start menu, this will bring you the category view of Windows Control Panel. Advanced users usually set it to classic view the first time they go there, because this way you can see more links to settings and properties. The category view is for beginner users, you can do most of the things that are in classic view, the icons are just categorized, arranged together. Some of them can't be categorized so they can only be viewed in the classic view. You can always add more great tools to control panel that might be very handy, just search the net for these little tools.

Now that you are a bit more familiar with Windows Control Panel, we want to cover some of the things that it has and what are they used for. Read part two of this post.