Discussion (22)

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  1. Steve
    Steve

    My favorite that I can’t seem to find anywhere is the windows key + Pause/Break to get to system properties. WIN+Pause/Break. Then you can simply navigate from there. I can’t find any other keys that work to get to other areas of the CP. If anyone knows any, please share!

  2. Alejandro Ochoa
    Alejandro Ochoa

    Thank you so much. I’ll try one or more methods for Windows 7

  3. BLynne
    BLynne

    Thank you for posting this article. Big help in sidestepping Win 10’s circuitous route to access Control Panel! Re your Q; which of your suggestions did I opt for? 3 of them – adding to taskbar; adding the desktop menu to rt side of taskbar and adding a quick icon to the start menu! What I actually wanted to do was to add an icon to the horizontal row which appears above the start button. On my machine this selection includes only documents, settings, file explorer, My computer, and power.

    If anyone knows how to do this, I would love to add control panel to this row.

    Thanks, BL

  4. Siva
    Siva

    In normal keyboard with PAUSE key, use Win + PAUSE.
    I just found out that the cmd :
    control.exe system
    will open up Control panel home page.

  5. David Moori
    David Moori

    The all methods are good. We can access control panel by using one of them but in my opinion the best method is to make shortcut on desktop

  6. Dianesew
    Dianesew

    Thank you very much you helped me.

  7. oscar
    oscar

    they are all horrible in windows 10

  8. Marc van Beek
    Marc van Beek

    Still, unable to find Control Panel in my computer (W10 – dutch language). Where can I find the translation? Or is it in my computer anyway? I do find “instellingen” (I translate into “settings” in English), but both the icon and overview when clicked does not match the screenshots from the article.

  9. Rene
    Rene

    I wish that MS stops taking away options that doesn’t need removing and stops changing things that doesn’t need changing. A lot of changes that are unnessecary are just cosmetic changes but makes life on a windows computer more hard than it needs to be.

  10. Angel
    Angel

    excellent. thank you ..

  11. SK
    SK

    You can create a desktop shortcut to “C:WindowsSystem32control.exe”. Right-click the desktop > “New” > “Shortcut” > enter the above filepath. Another way is to pull up the “Start” menu > “Windows System” > right-click “Control Panel” > “More” > “Open File Location”. You can ctrl-C the shortcut and paste it anywhere, or right-click “Control Panel” > “Send To” > “Desktop”

  12. blah blah
    blah blah

    Every Win 10 major update that rolls out, they hide more and more functionality in the settings. This last Fall update, they turned hibernation file back on and reset a lot of my settings to defaults. Use to be able to go to System screen, and in right-hand menu click on some things to get the applets. Nope, can’t do that anymore. They’ve hyper-dumbed-down the settings front-end now, making it a real PITA to get to the REAL settings menus like Control Panel and the applets. It irks me that they’re not really changing where you go to make REAL changes (the applets), all they’re doing is burying them more and more under layers of dumbed-down Fisher Price UI that has no real power to do anything. It’s insulting to use Win 10 Pro, but feel like the system is designed for a 4yo and to prevent them from accidentally stubbing their toe. “Now now, user, we don’t want you hurting yourself by making it easy to access features that have REAL power. Just open up Facebook and go surf the web for a bit. That’s a good user (pat on head). Don’t worry about changing telemetry settings, or disabling hibernation files that eat up hard drive space. We’ll handle all that for you. WE know what’s best for you. You’re just a silly little user that doesn’t know what’s good for yourself.”

    1. Ciprian Adrian Rusen
      Ciprian Adrian Rusen

      You make a good point. We don’t like it either that they keep hiding the Control Panel and other advanced tools.

    2. J Chan
      J Chan

      Thinking initially though that it might be a malware attach issue that I could not repair, I factory reset my Windows 10 … actually twice now. But the situation has devolved even further. Upon trying to open the Control Panel, the result is simply an empty screen rendering only my Windows background and zero open tasks.

  13. bill
    bill

    very easy in Windows 10 Creator ——– right click the network icon in the system tray (it is either the wireless icon or the wired icon), click Open Network and Sharing Center, click Control Panel Home in the upper left corner of the window.

  14. Jim K
    Jim K

    all useless if you can not open run command, or win x. Win 10 needs a quick way to get to safe mode like before with F8. Win 10 SUCKS!

  15. vlade
    vlade

    use Classic Shell

  16. Ryan
    Ryan

    “Control Panel” in the WinX menu has been replaced with “Settings” on my computer. They must have changed this in a Windows 10 update at some point.

  17. Lindsay Chatterton
    Lindsay Chatterton

    Thanks for the article, who would have thought after 24 years of using Windows I wouldn’t be able to find Control Panel and you have to find it if you want to set the date format to something more useful here in Australia. The “settings” give you only one option !!

  18. Wendy
    Wendy

    Thanks so much for the info. I’m not very tech savvy and now with Windows 10 occasionally I feel lost trying to navigate my way around. They have made accessing things more complicated but you made it easy. Many Thanks!!!

  19. Munibuddin
    Munibuddin

    Good article. Useful.

    1. Ciprian Adrian Rusen
      Ciprian Adrian Rusen

      We’re happy that our work was useful to you. Thank you for the comment!