Control Pannel Shortcuts

Many windows are buried several levels deep in Vista’s Control Panel, so it can be a bit of a pain to make your way around the program. If you find yourself returning to the same spot often, there are several ways to make shortcuts and save yourself some time in the future. The easiest way to make a shortcut is with drag-drop. If you’re using the Control Panel Home (category) view, drag any link onto the desktop to make a shortcut, but don’t be surprised if the shortcut doesn’t take you as far as you wanted to go. For instance, drag the Change desktop background link, and you’ll get a shortcut to the Appearance and Personalization page only. You can get a little more control in the Classic View of Control Panel; just drag an icon to the desktop to make a shortcut.

Search for a setting in Control Panel, but be aware that you may not see all
the settings available

But if you want to get to a specific page or tab more directly, you can use any of the available command-line alternatives to open Control Panel pages and windows from shortcuts, the Start menu, or even from the Start ➝ Run dialog. For example, you can open the Advanced tab in the Advanced System Properties window with this old-school syntax (around since the days of Windows 3.x in the 1980s, if you can believe it):

control.exe sysdm.cpl ,3

Or, you can use this new standalone executable to accomplish the same thing:

SystemPropertiesAdvanced.exe

For a complete list of these shortcuts, see below

Control Panel Command line
Add Hardware Wizard hdwwiz.cpl

Administrative Tools control admintools

Advanced System Properties➝ SystemPropertiesAdvanced.exe
Advanced tab

Advanced System Properties➝ sysdm.cpl or
Computer Name tab SystemPropertiesComputerName.exe

Advanced System Properties➝ SystemPropertiesDataExecutionPrevention.exe
Advanced tab➝ Performance
Options➝ Data Execution
Prevention tab

Advanced System Properties➝ SystemPropertiesHardware.exe
Hardware tab