A brief history of Windows Settings

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ISSUE 22.10 • 2025-03-10 WINDOWS 11 By Simon Bisson The real story about the Windows Control Panel is a long and winding road that goes all the way ba
[See the full post at: A brief history of Windows Settings]

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Alex5723, ibe98765, WSbbeaudoin, shadonoz, teuhasn2, Lars220, abbodi86, windbg, Ulti P. Uszer, fisher75, Cybertooth, SueW, Casey S, Ed Tittel, DLivesInTexas, WSABQGeo, lmacri

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thanks for the article. I long for the day when all the control panel features migrate to settings or 1 place vs bouncing around the 2 of them. The mish mash of different features in both settings and control panel is very bizarre and inefficient. Mind you, so is the loss of all the custom visual settings (for folks with less then perfect vision) we used to be able to do in Window 7 and below, like enlarging scroll bars, menus, etc.

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teuhasn2, Ulti P. Uszer

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You neglected to mention the many, many command-line tools such as NET, SC, DISKPART and DISM which have no graphic interface equivalent (for the most part). And to complicate matters even further, there are the PowerShell commands, too numerous to wrap my head around. (Look at the output of get-command * to see what you’re dealing with.)

The problem I have with both the Control Panel (in category view) and Settings is where to find a command. Where can I change a network connection from Public to Private, or disable/enable a network adapter or its settings? Where can I set/change an environment variable? Where to change the machine name, or a username? Where to delete a printer, and then its drivers? Sometimes Settings Search works, most of the time there’s no answer.

It’s just a mess, the result of 40 years of scores of different development teams, all with their own agendas and priorities. I don’t see it ever getting resolved.

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ibe98765, shadonoz, teuhasn2, Lars220, windbg, KevinG3, WSABQGeo

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This is true; managing DOS and Windows still needs a lot of command line tooling. And it’s getting more, not less.

I’m in the middle of installing and configuring a cross-platform development environment on top of VS Code, and I’m in and out of both Powershell, the .NET CLI, and the tool’s own command line!

It would be so much nicer if this was all in one Settings app,

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Your [ get-command * ] yields the absurd lol
My biggest pet peave about 11 that has kept me from upgrading (?)  to it, not withstanding the fact that neither of my 2 PCs nor my laptop (all i7s) qualify, is the absurdity of trying to get anything done. A friend asked me to help him fix an issue with a peice of hardware, I couldn’t find anything ! Everything I could think of required at least an extra click if not 2

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Thank you Simon for the trip down Windows Memory Lane for this oldster (81) engineer.

And rbalin.  You hit the nail on the head.  What a mess.

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teuhasn2, Douglas, Lars220

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Windows settings can be in a pile of places, unfortunately.

• There’s the traditional Control Panel.
• There’s the Settings app, which has some of the settings in Control Panel, but not all.  And it has some settings that are not (or are no longer) in the Control Panel.
• There’s the registry.  Which includes LOTS of esoteric settings.
• There’s Group Policy (for domains).
• There’s Local Group Policy.
• There’s Local Security Policy.
• Occasionally, there are still .INI files.
• As user rbalin above notes, there are a number of traditional command line commands without GUI equivalents (e.g., dism, diskpart, net, etc.)
• PowerShell can also update/change much of the above — but not all.
  • There can be cmdlets that are directly on point and change it settings directly
  • Or you use PowerShell to change the registry
  • These include cmdlets replacements for most — but not all — of traditional command line commands.  And the PowerShell versions may have more functionality, but sometimes they have less.

So, yes, it’s a complete jumbled mess of Microsoft’s own doing.  And the Settings app is an atrocious tablet/touch system that works poorly at best and should be abandoned.  It was a mistake and a move into a tablet/mobile universe that never happened for Windows.  Everything in there should go back to the Control Panel.

Alternatively, I’d love for someone to come out with a “Super Control Panel” that replaced the existing Control Panel, incorporated any deprecated/removed features, and added all features in the Settings app.  Make it part of Microsoft’s “PowerToys” collection!

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ibe98765, driftless, rizzquery, teuhasn2, Lars220, Cybertooth

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I’m still upset with Microsoft for making me buy a lot of new hardware in order to run Windows 11 (notwithstanding that the new hardeware, with all-SSD drives, is blazingly fast!  But it has to because Windows continues to bloat…).

My PC journey started with DOS and a ‘286 processor.  Hardware and software evolved, Windows 3.1 arrived (for me) and that too evolved.  By the way, you forgot to mention Windows 2000, which was another good operating system.  My favorite was Windows XP.  Transistioned to Windows 7 in 2013, and now I’m transitioning to Windows 11, rebuilding two machines and buying a third.  The purchased machine cane with Windows 11, and it’s taken me a month to make it look like — you guessed it — Windows XP.  (Went through the same exereices for Windows 7.)  The new Windows look-and-feel is,to me, simply awful.  I can see no good reason for changing a useful human-machine interface.  I’m still using Office 2003 because it doesn’t have that horrible ribbon interface.

I just came across a great article on the subject “How to make Windows 11 more useable, less annoying” at  https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/windows-11-usability-guide.html.  He describes all of the steps that I had to learn the hard way to make Windows 11… less annoying!

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driftless, Lars220, windbg, Ulti P. Uszer, Cybertooth

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Thank you for the good educational article, very interesting. Would anyone be interested in the so-called “God Mode” where a lot of settings are in one place. Here is a brief quote from the geeks for geeks organization ( Last Updated  27 Sep, 2024 ) : =

“God Mode gives you access to a centralized control panel with all the system’s settings in one place, making it easy to manage everything from administrative tools to accessibility settings. Whether you’re using Windows 10 or Windows 11, activating God Mode is simple and can greatly enhance your experience by offering quick access to advanced features.”

Personally I do not know enough if “All” the system settings are included, but it is an interesting folder to have a shortcut to –

How to Enable God Mode In Windows 10 and 11

Amazing Truths Revealed: Link to Simply Magnificent AskWoody Knowledge Bases

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teuhasn2, Cybertooth

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I really detest this fragmentation and ever-changing array of multiple places to control Windows settings and policy. Microsoft pledged years ago to phase this out, and I think it’s getting worse, not better, at least in Win10 Pro. It’s almost as if (/s) the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, or if (gasp!) MS techs might possibly (/s again!) be at war with one another over OS control. Not a fan of Apple’s nanny-walling-off of settings control, either. It’s hard to say (Pick ‘Em) which approach is worse.

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driftless, Lars220, Cybertooth

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The only way to fix the mishmash that Windows has grown into to is to rewrite the whole thing from scratch.

Wasn’t this something that MS was working on at one time.  I think it was called Future System or similar?

With AI’s getting closer to being able to churn out reliable code, I look forward to the first OS written completely (and logically) by an AI.

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