Everyone who knows a little computer literacy knows what a control panel is. With it, you can perform a complete configuration of the operating system. The control panel allows you to:
- add and configure various devices (printers, scanners, modems, etc.);
- install and uninstall programs;
- include accessibility features;
- manage accounts (add and remove users, set passwords for entering the system);
- perform many other actions.
To open the Windows Control Panel, you can do one of the following:
1. Press the “Start” button, follow the arrow from the “Settings” item and select “Control Panel”.
2. In the open My Computer folder, select the control panel icon.
3. Click “Start”, then “Run”, and enter “Control” in the command field, then confirm the entry with Enter or click OK.
4. In the "Explorer" mode, select "My Computer" on the left and "Control Panel" on the right.
5. If you have installed the XP theme for the Start menu, and not the classic one, you can open the corresponding window directly from it.
So the window is open. What can be seen? Before us are more than two dozen different icons. They allow you to change the OS settings through dialog boxes. To understand what is hidden behind each icon, select the "Table" line in the "View" menu.
By the way, these “pictures” are called applets, but they are separate files with the extension .cpl. Each of them causes the launch of the system utility, and it, in turn, performs certain actions. The Windows 7 control panel may contain applets that are related not only to utilities of the Microsoft family, but also to third-party programs.
It is worth noting that the user will not always be able to immediately see the full list of possible functions of the control panel. If, for example, you have the Windows XP design theme installed on your computer, then after opening the window you will have to choose one of several categories (“Appearance and Themes”, “Accessibility”, “Sound, Speech and Audio Devices” and others). If for you this option is inconvenient, then you can easily switch to the classic control panel.
Please note that it is not always necessary to go to this folder in order to change something in the system. For example, if you want to set another picture on the desktop, then the “Screen” menu can be called up by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting “Properties”. As you can see, it is not necessary to open the control panel. By the way, in this menu you can not only replace the background of the desktop, but also install a screensaver, choose a theme, define a color scheme, screen resolution and much more.
In the category “Date, Time, Language and Regional Standards” there is a menu “Date and Time”. It can also be called by double-clicking the left mouse button on the clock located on the taskbar. Here you can change the current date and time, select the time zone, or even set the synchronization of this data with any Internet resource.
Well, the control panel is not such a difficult tool as it might seem at first glance. It scares a huge number of functions, but it will take quite a bit of time to deal with each of them and feel much more confident when working with the system.