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A brief history of Windows Settings

Posted on March 10, 2025 at 02:45 CDT by Simon Bisson • Comment in the Forums

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 back to DOS.

Windows has always had a way of managing its settings. Right from its first version, it had a control panel that let you configure your installation. Today, it’s a collection of tools that have evolved considerably over the years from that first control panel, going from a simple applet with a handful of functions to today’s one-stop Settings shop for configuring everything Windows.

That evolution has taken us through multiple designs and redesigns, from icon-based tools with buttons and sliders, to today’s text-first Web-like interface. It hasn’t been a smooth journey either, with Microsoft’s commitment to backward compatibility leaving you switching across different generations of Windows as you drill further down into settings dialogs.

Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.10.0, 2025-03-10).
This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

Windows 11 AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, Control Panel, CPL, Microsoft Management Console, MMC, Newsletters, Windows, Windows 1.0, Windows 10, Windows 10X, Windows 11, Windows 2.0, Windows 3.11, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP

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