Windows 8 Control Panel is one Windows 8 Metro UI based interface which has been widely appreciated by the users. Currently the second most talked about Windows 8 feature after Start Menu, Control Panel is revitalized with a host of new shortcuts, applet for various system components, quick links to configuration consoles while including Windows 8 native utilities related settings and toggles. The new Metro Control Panel doesn’t replace Category View included in previous Windows versions, such as, Windows 7 and Windows Vista. You will still be able to switch to old Category view of Control Panel from within the new interface.

This guide is a part of our series on detailed coverage of Windows 8 New Features and Improvements.

1. How To Install Windows 8 On VirtualBox
2. What’s New In Windows 8 Desktop, Start Search, And Start Menu
3. The Complete Guide To Windows 8 Explorer, New Ribbon Tools And Options
4. The Complete Guide To Windows 8 Task Manager, New Features And Options
5. The Complete Guide To Windows 8 Metro Control Panel (Currently Viewing)
6. How To Refresh Or Reset Your Windows 8 PC [Complete Guide]
7. All About Windows 8 FileName Collisions And Copy/Move Dialog Box
8. The Complete Guide To Windows 8 Startup Menu
9. Sync Windows 8 User Settings Between PCs & Tablets via Windows Live ID
10. Quick Overview Of Windows Lock Screen 
11. The Complete Guide To Windows 8 File History Backup 

Talking of new addition in Windows 8 Control Panel, PC Sync, Reset & Refresh, Notifications, and Start Search customization options are the most significant. Along with these major changes, Control Panel Metro user interface includes tons of other small applets to change numerous Privacy, User Profile, Wireless, Share, Homegroup, and Windows Update related settings. You can launch Windows 8 Control Panel with Metro UI from either Start Menu or Start Search.

Personalize

If your Windows 8 copy is yet to be activated, it will first show Activate Windows asking you to enter license key or activate copy via phone. Windows 8 Control Panel shows Personalize applet by default, which contains customizations for both Lockscreen and User Tile. Under Lock Screen customization page, you can change the lock screen background and allow selected applications to add details and send notifications to lock screen. The User Tile shows the currently applied user tile background with options to capture snapshot from webcam or select picture from local location. The User Tile Personalize option also allows using an external application to create custom user tile.

Users

The Users window deals with current user account settings, which includes changing user account and password, creating picture password, or inserting PIN code to replace default password required login behavior. Here, you can manage other users, create new ones, and configure their account settings as well.

Notifications

The Wireless window displays current and previously connected WLAN networks. Whereas, under Notifications window, you can allow applications to show notifications, toggle notification sound on/off, and enable/disable notifications for each application.

Privacy

The Privacy window lets you set basic level privacy settings, such as, toggle allow apps to use location, user name, and account picture On/Off.  You can remove application history for specified number of days from App history section.

General (Settings)

Under General window, you can change various touch keyboard settings of Windows 8 based tablet. It lets you switch add period after double-tab, capitalize first letter, use all uppercase letter when shift key is tapped twice, and play key sounds On/Off. You will also find Refresh your PC and Reset your PC utilities, both of which have been discussed in our guide here.

Search

Windows 8 Start Search can be customized from Search window. It allows you to toggle save history on/off, delete all search keywords from MRU list, show/hide apps at top of Start Search pane, and select applications which you want to keep in Windows 8 Start Search pane.

Share

The Share window includes options to change the Windows native Share utility options, including, show/hide people with whom user shares applications most often, change number of history items to keep in Search pane, delete Share history, and show/hide applications user shares. Underneath these toggles, you can select applications which are to be shown in Windows Search pane.

Send

The Send window includes somewhat similar options to Share window. It allows you to customize the history settings and select applications which you wish to include in Send pane.

Ease of Access

In Ease of Access window, you can switch between two Windows 8 display high and low contrasts. By default, you see white background in metro based application and other Win32 based applications, however, by enabling the High Contrast option, it will turn Windows 8 interface contrast to high. This will change the default color of Windows 8 default highlighter from green to purple, change desktop background and Windows Explorer button and background colors to black. You can revert back to original contrast by disabling High Contrast option.

Devices

Unlike Windows 7, where connected devices are listed in Hardware and Sound window (accessible from Control Panel), Windows 8 shows all the connected devices, including display monitor, headphones, microphone, Fax, and other peripherals under Devices window. The Remove option is available with each connected device to unplug the device from system.

Sync PC Settings

The Sync PC is brand new addition to Windows. In Windows 8, you can customize synchronization of different Windows features and their data across all connected devices and PCs running Windows 8. In Sync PC Settings, you can switch Sync PC on/off, and select different elements of items which you wish to sync with other PCs including, Personalize, Themes, Ease of Access, Language preferences, Installed Applications, Taskbar, Windows Explorer, Search, Account picture, and Homegroup.

Windows Update

The Windows Update window shows current Windows Update status, uninstalled updates, and option to look for available updates online. Moreover, you can switch automatic update on/off.

Category View

The More Settings link will reveal the classic Category view of Control Panel, which shows all the Control Panel applets in respective groups. You can access all Windows 8 Control Panel settings from category view as well.

Windows 8 Control Panel might look a tad confusing at first, but once you become familiar with the new metro-based user interface, it will prove to be more useful than Category View of Control Panel. It must be noted that tools and features covered above are limited to Windows 8 Developer Build. We will keep this post updated with latest additions to Windows 8 Control Panel. If you haven’t grabbed Windows 8 Developer Build yet, read about it here.

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Right Click Enhancer is a tweak for adding items and enhancing available options for the Windows context menu. It allows you to customize the right click menu, by adding folder and file shortcuts, applications for moving items to, system configuration utility (msconfig), opening files with the notepad, the option to add files and folders to cascading menu and so on. other than context menu enhancement options, you can also benefit from the My Computer Manager option to add file and folder shortcuts to My Computer and the Control Panel. Moreover, useful features like encryption and decryption can be added to the context menu for encrypting or decrypting a file from the Windows context menu. Right Click Enhancer has much more simplified options than the formerly reviewed PC Utility Manager.

The main interface of Right Click Enhancer displays five primary options. These include My Computer Manager, Right Click Tweaker, Send To Manager, Right Click Shortcuts Creator and Right Click Cascading Menu Creator.

From the My Computer manager option, you can add your important files and folders to My Computer and the Control Panel.

The selected files and folders will be instantly displayed to My Computer or the Control Panel (as selected). It can be quite useful to add shortcuts of commonly used documents or folders to ensure that you are able to easily access them from these two system paths.

Similarly, The Right Click Tweaker option enables adding a file list, copy to folder, move to folder, open in Notepad, encrypt/decrypt, print file list, problem step recorder and system config utility (msconfig) to the right click menu.

Adding these options can have a number of advantages such as quick encryption/decryption of files, opening files instantly in the Notepad for editing, being able to move or copy files to a specific location and accesing the msconfig utility from context menu.

You can select specific system paths from the Send to Manager option for enabling quick transfer of items from the right-click menu. For example, the default options of the context menu allow quickly sending a file, folder, etc to the desktop, thumb drive, documents directory and so on. You can add more path like these to Sent To Menu.

For further adding items to the context menu, you can use the Shortcut Creator and Right Click Cascading Menu features. This will enable you to add specific items to the context menu by specifying system paths.

Right Click Enhancer works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download Right Click Enhancer

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As news of Windows 8 new build-in features gets out every day, some developers have begun creating applications which emulate the Windows 8 leaked features like functionality. Recently, we heard that Windows Live will be integrated in system notification area of Windows 8. The developer AngleWZR over at deviantArt has recently created a small utility called Taskbar UserTile which, however, doesn’t integrate Windows Live features but adds user profile picture in Windows 7 taskbar with options to access Control Panel, Log off, Lock PC, and Switch user.

Taskbar UserTile is in initial alpha testing phase and contains a lot of anomalies, worth mentioning, conflicts with Windows 7 Explorer and taskbar services. Nevertheless, after giving it a try for multiple times, we got it working just fine. The usage is easy, if you’re comfortable with adding default picture in taskbar which comes in downloaded package, simply run the executable file. If you want to add an image from external source, you can either replace the image residing in Resources folder or edit configuration file (config.ini) to specify target image path. The third scenario would be of using User Profile image, to use it, just delete the configuration file and then run UserTile.exe with administrative privileges.

It will add the specified image next to system clock in taskbar. Upon click, it will show you aforementioned Windows options with facility to directly access Control Panel and User Profile settings window.

Download Taskbar UserTile

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Some while ago we covered a neat little hack for Windows 7 that allowed you to put programs in My Computer under Network Locations. One of our readers, caschy, suggested using Folder2MyPC for the same reason. We gave the utility a shot and indeed, it simplifies the process far more, and also brings the option to add programs under control panel as well.

Folder2MyPC has a simple, easy-to-use interface consisting of five main tabs: Create Folder, Create Application, Edit Delete, Language, and About. The first tab allows creation of folders under My Computer, while the second tab lets you create application shortcuts under both My Computer and Control Panel.

The Edit Delete tab not only allows modification of existing shortcuts, but also backup and restore should you need it. Languages available include English and Russian.

Following two snapshots show what the program is capable of.

Main features on Folder2MyPC include:

• Add/change/remove any folder and programs in a folders “My Computer” and “Control Panel“
• You can chose how you want to open the folder (in a new window or not)
• Customize the shortcut’s icon
• Create shortcut’s both for the current user and for all users of PC
• Program loading for display of new folders, after creation of folders is not required

We have tested this software on Windows 7 32-bit operating system.

Download Folder2MyPC

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This tweak will prohibit all users from accessing the Control Panel. I know it seems a bit odd but sometimes this does come in handy, lets say you have several computers over the network and you know that these computers will never be used for Administration Purpose and the basic settings will pretty much stay static for these computers. Then in such a scenario it would be a wise decision to apply this tweak to make sure that users aren’t able to change any settings.

First, launch the Local Group Policy Editor, click Start, type gpedit.msc and hit Enter.

Now navigate to the User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel option from the left sidebar. You will be able to locate the Prohibit access to the Control Panel option in the main window.

Double click it and set its value to Enabled.

That’s it, the access to the control panel will be denied. These steps are applicable in Windows Vista as well. If you want to enable the control panel back, just set the value to Not Configured or Disabled.

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As you all know by now, Windows 7 includes Jump List feature. Jump lists allow easy access to common tasks related to the corresponding application. If you are looking to create custom jump lists, we have already covered a post here. By default the Jump list in Windows 7 displays only a total of 10 items. Let me guide you how you can increase and decrease this number.

Right-click the empty area of the Taskbar and choose Properties.

The Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window will be displayed, now go to the Start Menu tab and click the Customize button.

The Customize Start Menu window will be displayed, here locate the Number of recent items to display in Jump Lists option, and increase or decrease the value of this option to the number of items that the Jump List can accommodate at a maximum.

Click OK and you are done.

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Administrative Tools allow you to perform some common tasks like managing firewall settings, starting and stopping services, managing hard disk settings, etc.You can locate these administrative tools under the “System and Security” section of the Control Panel. But for faster access, let me share a tip on how to add it to the Start Menu.

Right click an empty area of the task bar and choose the Properties option.

The Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window will be displayed, here go to Start Menu tab and then click the Customize button.

Now the Customize Start Menu window will be displayed. Here locate the System administrative tools section and choose the Display on the All Programs menu and the Start menu option from the radio buttons.

Click OK and that’s it, now you will be able to access the Administrative Tools directly from the Start Menu.

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If you have diagnosed and fixed some problem in Windows 7 and after some time you are not sure what exactly steps you followed, then you can view the troubleshooting history. Go through the following simple steps to view the troubleshooting history in Windows 7.

First of all, click Start and choose the Control Panel. In the control panel choose Large icons from the View By drop down option.

Now choose the Troubleshooting option in the control panel.

Here choose the View history option in the left side column of the troubleshooting dialogue box.

Now you will get a list of all the troubleshooting steps which you adopted. I recently used the network diagnostic utility and it is visible in the list.

You may also clear this troubleshooting history by clicking the Clear history button. Enjoy!

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Do you have a Nvidia Graphic card? The latest firmware from Nvidia installs a script that enables Nvidia Control Panel on desktop right-click context menu. This can slow down the loading speed of the context menu when you right-click on the Desktop if you are using a low-end computer. In my case, I simply don’t need this option because it’s useless. If you are in same situation like me, its time to disable/remove it.

An example of Nvidia Control Panel item in the right-click context menu is shown in the screenshot below.

Disable Using Build-In Option

Right-click on the Desktop and choose NVIDIA Control Panel. Now go to View and uncheck Add Desktop Context Menu.

Now you will see the Nvidia Control Panel gone from the right-click menu.

Disable By Hacking Registry

If you do not have Add Desktop Context Menu option in your Nvidia control panel, then you can remove it using registry hack.

Type regedit in your Start menu search or Run dialog box. Once the Registry Editor is open, navigate to the following branch,

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\

Right-click on NvCplDesktopContext and select Export and save the file at some safe location, this will come useful during backup. Now simply delete the key.

Disable Script From Loading Using ShellExView

If you want to disable the shell extension key from loading again, then simply use ShellExView to completely disable the Nvidia shell extension from running again.

Run the program and you will see a list of hundreds of shell extensions, locate DesktopContext Class from the list(best way is to press Ctrl+F and type the name in search box).

You will see Nvidia Display Properties Extension written in the Description, to confirm double click it, and you will get full properties with name and details. Disable this shell extension and you are done!

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Are you facing trouble opening Add/Remove Programs from your Control Panel? Does it give you the error saying that it has been disabled by administrator? Some days back we covered a post on How to enable show hidden files and folders when disabled by a virus, the problem of Disabled Add/Remove program is also a registry tweak caused by some virus and is quite frustrating for those who wants to uninstall a software but this dialogue box won’t just open up. This problem has a pretty easy solution.

Before following the below mentioned steps, it is always necessary to backup registry, if you don’t know how to create backup, follow this link of our other post.

If your system is attached to a domain, your network administrator may have disabled the Add or Remove Programs applet.

For standalone system, follow these steps:

Go to Start > Run and type regedit

Expand  HKEY_CURRENT_USER from the list

Now expand the Software branch from the list.

Scroll down to find Microsoft from the list, expand this option and then Windows from the next list.

 You will now encounter Current Version, expand it and then expand Policies too.

Here you will see an Uninstall option, select this key and on the right side you will find a key named NoAddRemovePrograms.

Delete this key to enable the Add/Remove Programs dialogue in the control Panel. And you are done !

Warning: Make sure that you have made a backup of your registry before making any changes to it.

Got any questions, suggestions, or feedback? Feel free to leave a comment.

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Note: This post is for those who have Nvidia graphic card installed on their computer.

The "NVIDIA Control Panel" can be directly accessed from Start menu or Start Search menu in Windows Vista, generally its not used much often and doesn’t;t require a separate item in the desktop context menu. If it annoys you then you probably didn’t realize that it’s easy to remove. For those who doesn’t know what we’re talking about, see the screenshot after the jump, here’s the menu item we’re looking to remove.

Remove It From Nvidia Control Panel

Just open up the NVIDIA Control Panel from the Start menu or by right clicking on the Desktop.

Uncheck Add Desktop Context Menu option From The View field.

This will remove the Nvidia Control Panel Option from the desktop right click context menu.

Remove It By Registry

This menu item can also be removed by tweaking registry, to change it, open the registry by typing regedit in the Start Search in the Start menu.

Navigate to the following registry key.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\

Find the NvCplDesktopContext key on the left hand side, Once you’ve done that, delete that key.

Always make sure that whenever applying registry changes, first backup the registry by exporting it to the desired location.

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