Control Panel and consoles in Windows 11

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ISSUE 21.23 • 2024-06-03 WINDOWS 11 By Ed Tittel Control Panel element counts are shrinking, but they remain surprisingly active and entangled in Wind
[See the full post at: Control Panel and consoles in Windows 11]

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Norio, Steve S., lmacri, KB6OJS, fisher75, Fred

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Will Windows 11 GodMode display both Control Panel and Settings elements ?

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Ed Tittel

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Alex5723 wrote:

Will Windows 11 GodMode display both Control Panel and Settings elements ?

Yes.

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Ed Tittel, Fred, Alex5723

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I wonder if there’s a way to distinguish between System and User settings?

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There’s no easy pre-defined way to do this that I can find. It would have to come from scripting with generation of system and per-use configuration data, then some kind of file-diff approach to show where things are the same, and where they diverge. As I search for enlightenment on this topic on line, it appears to be something of a rabbit hole. You may have pointed me to a research topic for a new story. But alas, it’s not one for which I have an answer ready to deliver. Thanks for your comment.

–Ed–

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Mmmmm, interesting, as always, however I cannot get my God Mode icon to actually display the “God Mode” name, even after pasting in that string. Running Win10 Ver 22H2 Build 19045.4474

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From the article (highlighting is mine):

4. After you hit the Enter key, the file icon changes to an unlabeled Control Panel icon, as in Figure 1.

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FWIW, I couldn’t find a way to force it to show a caption with that icon. And when I just attempted to create a shortcut for that icon right now on my test PC it did exactly nothing after I went through the right-click | show more options | shortcut sequence. A Microsoft Answers thread that raises the same question appears to confirm its intransigence in this behavior.

Interesting, eh?

–Ed–

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Really hate the new “Settings” section. The old Control panel is much more usable.

Sick of everything being turned into a “phone app” nowadays.

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Ed Tittel, Cybertooth

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I’ve had a Godmode shortcut on my system since Windows XP. 👍

It’s noteworthy that four of those elements (hdwiz.cpl, MLCFG32.cpl, inetcpl.cpl, and sapi.cpl) don’t do anything when entered into the Start menu search box or a command line.

Three of those work just fine on my Windows 10 22H2 from both the Start menu search and cmd prompt.

hdwiz.cpl (it’s actually hdwwiz.cpl) and opens this control panel.

inetcpl.cpl opens this control panel.

And sapi.cpl opens this control panel.

Note: The sapi.cpl file is located in C:\Windows\System32\Speech\SpeechUX so, unless your Path variable includes that location like mine does, it won’t run from the Start menu search or cmd prompt but it does still work.

There was no MLCFG32.cpl file anywhere on my Windows 10 system??

Just FYI, the Bluetooth properties (bthprops.cpl) only works if your system has a Bluetooth device.

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Norio

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Oooh. Good work. Thanks for the correx. I’ll reach out to Will Fastie to fix these things. Appreciate the time and effort you put in to create such a detailed and helpful comment. Best wishes & thanks again,

–Ed–

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Settings in Windows 11 will never be a viable replacement for the Control Panel as long as Microsoft keeps changing the utilities and/or taking away functionality. For example, after trying to use Devices and Printers and Network and Sharing Center – even when trying to access them from the current Control Panel, you do not get the same dialog or access as in Windows 10. If you access either in Control Panel, you get the new dialogs in Settings, which do not give you the same functionality. Plus, you have twice as many to clicks to find that out. I got around it by right-clicking the icon in the Control Panel and creating a shortcut, which I was able to add to my Start Menu. Now I have access to same functionality I had in Windows 10. It is clear the engineers at Microsoft do not have practical every day knowledge and experience in network and system management. These are just 2 examples of several I have found that prove newer is not always better. I will continue to use the Control Panel over Settings, even though sometimes I still have to use my own creativity to get what I need.

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Cybertooth

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Thanks for sharing your observations and a terrific workaround with us. I think we all erect coping mechanisms to help us dig into Windows complexities in workable ways. Appreciate the comment. Thanks again,

–Ed–

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Ah Yes, the tech weenies must continually change things to justify their existance!

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Ed Tittel

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I got the red error ‘permission’ messages as you warned about but my output was empty.

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This sounds like some issue related to PowerShell permissions and output in general. Another reader is getting ready to post a link to an alternate script. You might want to try that one and see if it works better than mine. Alternatively you can go into standard PS script debugging mode and execute its commands one at a time. You should then see where it’s blowing up, or by checking variable values along the way, see where the data gathering is not working on your PC. Sorry for the inconvenience. This is kind of where I live, and what I went through to get the scripts ready for inclusion in the story.

Best wishes, and thanks for your comment,

–Ed–

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The Internet Tools in Control Panel is the old Internet Tools for Internet Explorer that goes to back Windows 95

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Ed Tittel, Norio

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If: Keyboard Properties; main.cpl; Opens Mouse Properties CPL, how does one open true keyboard properties. I have a slightly curved left little finger and am forever hitting the caps lock key which truly drives me nuts. I have searched the web multiple times and have as yet to find a satisfactory way to disable Cap Locks.

AskWoody Rocks!

Win 10 22H2 19045.4412

I see very little in Win 11 that would compel me to update.

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bzj wrote:

…how does one open true keyboard properties. I have a slightly curved left little finger and am forever hitting the caps lock key which truly drives me nuts.

See if the settings in the Ease of Access settings area might be of some use. Once you open the Ease of Access Center (from, of course, Control Panel, by clicking the green-colored title of “Ease of Access” followed by the green-colored “Ease of Access Center”), scroll down a bit until you find a link in blue that says “Make the keyboard easier to use”. That link has a little drawing of a keyboard next to it to help someone find it.

I went to the regular Keyboard settings that show up in Control Panel, but all those do is help you set the character repeat rate and the cursor blink rate. That’s why I presume that the items available for the keyboard in the Ease of Access Center might be of more possible use.

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I have an MS Keyboard so I use the Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center app to do keyboard stuff. That said, if you open main.cpl, you should see “Mouse Properties” show up and be able to access Mouse controls from there. As you can see in this screencap: it simply points to Mouse and Keyboard center on my PC for more details.

HTH, and thanks for your comment.

–Ed–

 

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bzj wrote:

I have searched the web multiple times and have as yet to find a satisfactory way to disable Cap Locks.

If you are OK with editing the Registry there is a Registry key you can add that will stop Cap Locks from turning on from the Caps Locks key. The instructions for this creating this Registry key is at the link below:

Disable the CapsLock key via Registry in Windows 10/11

HTH, Dana:))

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Ed Tittel, bzj

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Dana,

For those who don’t want to hit the Registry you can also accomplish this with the PowerToys Keyboard tool. You just set the CapsLock key to Disable.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Ed Tittel, bzj

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I was able to disable Caps Lock, thank you. Initially though I tried to remap it to the Shift key, but was stumped by what to enter into the “Select” field to the right of “To send:”

Apologies to all for any newbie errors/foibles, as I have rarely used any forums.

Life is a b—- and then you get older. -J

 

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Ed Tittel

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I’m Ok with editing the registry, but I tried this before and it didn’t seem to work, I must have missed something. I tried RetiredGeek’s suggestion instead in order to learn about PowerToys. -J

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Ed Tittel

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This seems like a bit of a detour away from the key topics of the story but it is important and useful information. Thanks for sharing to all who got into the preceding “Caps Lock” discussion. Best wishes,

–Ed–

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I’m glad you included the “God Mode” link in the article. I’ve been using that for years, ever since it first poked its head up! That item, sitting on my desktop, is my go-to for everything system/console/control-panel.

//Steve//

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Yes, it’s been around for a long time, and surprisingly few people know about and take advantage of it. I’ve gotten in the habit of including it in the OneDrive stuff that gets copied to my desktop automatically.

Thanks for your comment,

–Ed–

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Hey Y’all,

I loved Ed’s article and it got me thinking about how to eliminate the errors.
So after considerable work (I’m like a dog with a bone!) I came up with a script called Get-WinSettingsApps.ps1 which you can download from my shared OneDrive folder.

After I got the code working I went about testing on different platforms and got some weird results as follows:

Differences between PS 5 & 7:

--- Dell XPS 8920 i-7700 32Gb DDR4 ---

Powershell Vers: 5.1.22621.2506
Run Time       : 00:42
Setting Pgms   : 43

Powershell Vers: 7.4.2
Run Time       : 30:54  <-- What's this about?
Setting Pgms   : 43   

--- UM790 Pro Ryzen 9 7940HS 32Gb DDR5 5600 ---

Powershell Vers: 5.1.22621.2506
Run Time       : 00:22
Setting Pgms   : 41

Powershell Vers: 7.4.2
Run Time       : 27:32  <-- What's this about?
Setting Pgms   : 41

--- Dell 137000 i5-5200U 8Gb DDR3 (single channel)---

Powershell Vers: 5.1.19041.4291
Run Time       : 03:29
Setting Pgms   : 50

Powershell Vers: 7.4.2
*** at 4 hours I cancelled it *** !!!

Anyone out there know why?

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Thanks for posting this. Good work. I’m thinking execution time for some PS commands varies by PS version and the whole-drive coverage of the system/boot drive in the scripts adds hundreds of thousands of individual file checks, and thousands of levels of directory structure to that mix.

Thanks again,

–Ed–

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Shane Doyle wrote:

Mmmmm, interesting, as always, however I cannot get my God Mode icon to actually display the “God Mode” name, even after pasting in that string. Running Win10 Ver 22H2 Build 19045.4474

What you can do is create a folder with the name God Mode and move the God Mode folder inside the new folder, thus giving it a name.

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Good fix. Thanks for sharing. I’ve learned to recognize the “odd icon” on my desktop, but your approach is more explicit. Thanks again, =Ed=

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PL1

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Shane Doyle wrote:

Mmmmm, interesting, as always, however I cannot get my God Mode icon to actually display the “God Mode” name, even after pasting in that string. Running Win10 Ver 22H2 Build 19045.4474

While looking for something else, I ran across instructions on how have the “God Mode” shortcut actually display God Mode text under the icon.

The trick is, instead of creating a new folder, create a new shortcut using

C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

as the location and “God Mode” as the name.

You’ll end up with a shortcut that looks like this.

But, since it’s a shortcut instead of a folder, when you right-click and select properties, you’ll see the Change Icon… option.

Use C:\Windows\system32\shell32.dll as the icon file name and then select the same God Mode icon the folder uses.

Click OK all the way back out and your shortcut will now look just like the God Mode folder shortcut but will actually display God Mode text under the icon like this.

And it still works exactly like the God Mode folder shortcut.

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Ed Tittel, Cybertooth

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