Microsoft Says It's Getting Rid of Control Panel in Windows 197
Microsoft plans to phase out Windows Control Panel, a feature dating back to the 1980s, in favor of the modern Settings app, according to a recent support page. The tech giant has been gradually shifting functions to Settings since 2015, aiming for a more streamlined user experience. However, no specific timeline for Control Panel's complete removal has been announced. Microsoft writes in the support page: The Control Panel is a feature that's been part of Windows for a long time. It provides a centralized location to view and manipulate system settings and controls. Through a series of applets, you can adjust various options ranging from system time and date to hardware settings, network configurations, and more. The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.
Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:2, Funny)
Just use AI. Microsoft should just use AI .. you should type into the prompt change this, change that. fuck off.
Re:Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:4, Funny)
Apple should do so too. I just clicked the magnifying glass icon and typed "increase the screen brightness" on my Mac and it showed web search results the first being "change screen brightness in Windows".
Switch to linux.
Re:Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:5, Funny)
I've just tried it with Copilot:
Me: Copilot, turn of all the crap that Microsoft added to Windows that I never asked for and most definitely don't want.
Copilot: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. Would you like me to turn on Windows Recall instead?
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you should type into the prompt change this,
yeah, you mean like an /etc/ directory? I thought that's what they were going to use instead with /sys and /proc for more dynamic stuff.
Anyway, getting rid of interfaces people are used to is seldom a good idea...
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They needed *something* for this news cycle.
Re:Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, getting rid of interfaces people are used to is seldom a good idea...
The really odd thing is that if someone doesn't want to use the control panel, they don't have to. So in the bloated cruftmuffin that Windows is, Control panel could just be left alone, for those that might want to use it, without much problem.
MS seems to like to do this. It ends up with Whack-a-Mole administration. Shit gets moved around. Things you used to be able to do with mental muscle memory end up requiring web searches to find where they put something.
A product of Microsoft believing that the main purpose of computing is the Operating System. It isn't. They really should learn that the purpose of an OS is to allow programs that actually do something to work unimpeded, and keep the hell out of the way otherwise.
Re:Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I do not mind MS replacing Control Panel with Settings in principle. What I mind is Settings not having the same functionality of Control Panel. Part of it is some directive at MS to hide or obscure settings that were easy to change in Control Panel that is now buried under 4 sub menus or not part of Settings at all.
For example, my computer every now and then forgets my sound system is 5.1 and defaults to stereo for some unknown reason. The change is only in Sound in Control Panel. That is two clicks to get to it or using search bar "Change system sound". To do that through Settings, it is Settings -> System -> Sound -> Sound Control Panel which takes you to the Control Panel anyway.
Cynically, I think one major reason that Settings exist is so MS can ignore settings from the user by hiding things. For example, I do not have an Xbox thus Xbox Game Bar is useless. I thought I turned it off . . . but no. It still runs in the background and can connect with Xbox Game Servers. Even "Off" is a mere suggestion. When playing games, it would literally pop up a window and interrupt whatever I was playing with something like "You are playing [Game]. Would you like to play this game with your Xbox friends online?" dialogue box. For a single player game when I do not have an Xbox or an online account. Turns out notifications for Xbox Game Bar ignores the "Off” setting. I had to actually remove parts of Xbox Gaming to get it to stop as there is no setting for that specific app anywhere. I can see MS leveraging this behavior to "You fool. You think you turned off telemetry. . . .bahahaha"
Re:Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have the same overall issue as you - they haven't even hit feature parity with "Settings" after like 10 years, but want to yank control panel. This is par for the course for many companies these days. Version 2.0 is here! We are going to switch next month! Even though Version 2.0 is missing about 50% of what version 1.0 had...
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Funny you mention sound, I just noticed an oddity on my Windows 11 machine this morning. If I pop the start menu and type sound, then click on Sound Settings, it takes me to... Settings. Just general settings. Not the sound settings dialog like it used to take me directly to.
That happens to me sometimes. Again not sure why "Sound" sometimes takes me to Sound in Settings and sometimes it takes me to plain Settings. It is rather inconsistent. Try it tomorrow and it might take you to the correct place.
I have the same overall issue as you - they haven't even hit feature parity with "Settings" after like 10 years, but want to yank control panel. This is par for the course for many companies these days. Version 2.0 is here! We are going to switch next month! Even though Version 2.0 is missing about 50% of what version 1.0 had...
Yes. In the beginning of Windows 10, there was no way to change the speaker configuration if I remember right. But they added Spatial sound later. Under non-intuitive "Device properties" sub menu. Why don't I use that: Spatial sound only offers 4 options: Stereo, 5.1, 7.1,Windows Son
Re:Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with the Settings panel is the fucked up UI where it is hard to tell if something is on or off.
Microsoft shows a checkbox as this:
(.x) On
Toggling it now shows this:
(x.) Off
A GOOD UI would make the setting unambiguous, analogous to a real physical switch:
Off (.x) On
The second problem is that the Settings takes a LOT of vertical space. The control panel is compact.
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It would be great if they could just leave it alone, but if they do that it could stop working in unpredictable ways because the underlying system that it's controlling has changed.
Screw that. They let the disk formatting utility sit for 30 years and it worked.
Re:Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you need a settings screen?
Just use AI. Microsoft should just use AI
Because it can be useful to see what the current settings are?
Re: Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or what settings there even are.
Re: Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately the real settings of windows are scattered around in places that no reasonable person would ever go like services.msc, gpedit.msc, Windows Registry, etc.
They really don't want users to look at or change the settings unless they're about trivial features. I have to use windows because of work but this attitude makes me dislike it intensely.
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Because it can be useful to see what the current settings are?
Just ask the AI what the settings are!
Re:Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:5, Funny)
Just use AI. Microsoft should just use AI .. you should type into the prompt change this, change that. fuck off.
C:> Turn off all the damned data scraping, telemetry and ads
>> I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Re: Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:2)
Imagine trying to do that if the keyboard layout is the wrong one, because the control panel app has been replaced with AI.
QWERTY "C:> Turn off all the damned data scraping, telemetry and ads"
AZERTY "C:> Tzr, off qll the dqnned dqtz scrqpinb; telemetry qnd qds"
Proof that chatgpt can't even mistype properly. It thought damned would become danned. And that the m in telemetry would remain m on AZERTY
If you can't trust AI these days, who can you trust ?
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The issue I fine with the current control panel, is that things were a lot easier when things were a lot simpler, but nowadays we have more devices such as graphics cards, weird inbuilt audio drivers, and just a handful of nonsensical menus to flick through to find that one setting.
Ther
Re: Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:3)
Essentially, that would be the Show More Options equivalen
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I can't do that Dave.
Re:Why do you need a settings screen? (Score:5, Informative)
HAL is literally 1 letter off from IBM, probably the best part of the joke ever.
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Wow, I never noticed this lol
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Clarke lampshaded that in the novel version of 2010.
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Just use AI. Microsoft should just use AI .. you should type into the prompt change this, change that. fuck off.
I really like the VSCode method of settings. You just press and search for settings instead of looking through layers and layers of menus or UI screens.
Asking AI for how to change settings is also good but then it also has the issue of asking you change things that don't exist.
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Just use AI. Microsoft should just use AI .. you should type into the prompt change this, change that. fuck off.
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that. Would you like a nice cupcake recipe instead?"
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And if you don't know the terms to use, you will not be able to ask the AI anything.
Most people can figure out how to check / change resolution. It's probably got something to do with display / screen / monitor and such. They may not know the term called resolution - but they may just want to change the size of things shown on the screen.
I can imagine the "AI" having difficulty understanding what people are trying to do when they don't know the actual term used.
Best of luck. It will take a long, long time. (Score:2)
I mean, there is so much entwined there that moving it all is one heck of an undertaking. I get the motivation (searchable settings, etc, etc), but still, let's see how this goes five years from now.
Re:Best of luck. It will take a long, long time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since when does Microsoft shy away from breaking shit that works?
Remember, Microsoft always delivers banana software: it arrives green and matures at the customers'.
Here I'm sure they'll remove the Control Panel too soon, people will bitch and moan that this or that is missing or broken, and after a few months / years and several iteration, things will settle back to what it used to be with the Control Panel functionally. Not better, just different, and leaving a stream of users who had to deal with the teething problems for no good reason.
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Here I'm sure they'll remove the Control Panel too soon
Removing the control panel has been the end goal since Windows 8 hit the market with a new settings app. For someone somewhere I'm sure they still need it, but really for most people they don't. As it is the current user would struggle to find the control panel anyway. In Windows 10 18H2 they removed the last remaining visible link to it from the system.
But also remember Windows isn't made for you and me, it's made for the masses. The masses whose telemetry shows MS when they no longer use the control panel
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I still use it, and it works well enough. Running "control" is something I do out of habit because it is faster than navigating the ever-changing hellscape of Microsoft's start menu structure.
Re:Best of luck. It will take a long, long time. (Score:4, Insightful)
> For someone somewhere I'm sure they still need it
Yes, everyone who works in IT uses it al the time as the Settings app is fundementally broken.
It's totally faulty.
It cant uninstall software sometimes, in fact frequently it doesnt even show you what is actually installed.
It cant edit the firewall rules at all.
It cant configure a network card, I mean it literally is easier to set an IP address in Windows 3.11 than it is in Settings. Settings will let you enter the IP details, and will display what you entered. But it *wont actually change the IP details at all*.
It cant manage Bitlocker, cant manage the TPM. You cant edit or control shadow copies and file history.
The only thing it can do, as there is nothing else that will do it, is windows update and even then it still makes a mess of it due to it's restricted UI.
I do hear that the bug in not being able to set IP details on a NIC, which has existed since the ealry days of WIn 10, so nearly 8 years now, have been finally fixed in win 11.
Nobody in IT uses "Settings". My god you cant even use it to join a domain :D
MS have a TON of work to do. I think its going to take another 10 years befoe they migrate everything. WIndows 12 will probably finally only use the Settings app and by then I hope they fix it's awful UI.
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MS has been doing this for years, even the summary says from like 2015. Ten years lol.
Most of the control panel functionality has been moved to the new UI a while ago and it's not really necessary to go into the old CP UI. Some of the more obscure settings still launch the old applets but at this point the control panel as such can probably go away fairly safely.
Of course some people will whine about it but they'll also whine if Windows is using some UI from the 90s too.
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Most of the control panel functionality has been moved to the new UI
Which is the problem. Control Panel has everything you need in one location. Need to reset file associations? Control Panel. Need to fiddle with display settings? Control Panel. Need to uninstall a program? Control Panel. Need to remove certificates because your new password isn't replicating to Outlook or Teams? Control Panel.
Now it's a journey to some obscure location which has no reference to what you're trying to do, and you don
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Which is the problem. Control Panel has everything you need in one location.
Whose problem? The put everything in one location is a huge problem for someone new and inexperienced who doesn't know what they are looking for. That is user interface design 101. Throwing every option at the user is something for power users and experts only.
Instead putting these Settings into nested menus is a solution to the problem for new users. The biggest gripe really is that MS could just leave the control panel in place, there's no reason they can't have an interface for the general public and an
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Hear, hear.
I see you are a follow IT professional, slogging away doing everything from switching a user’s monitors on as "the monitors aren’t working" to trying to figure out why a server wont install that particular update.
Where I work we frequently will need to change the IP address of a NIC on a laptop or a server. Settings has the UI, but it can’t actually do the job.
Seems like whoever added the NIC IP details screen to Settings forgot to connect it to the back end! No error is displ
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Of course some people will whine about it but they'll also whine if Windows is using some UI from the 90s too.
Uh-huh. This is, of course, why some ODBC settings still use Windows 3.1 file requesters and screen layouts; people whine about 90's UI elements. Let's stick with 80's UI elements for good measure.
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> it's not really necessary to go into the old CP UI
In IT, all you use is CP. Settings barely functions. It's something we laugh about all the time as it cant even join a domain or, and I'm being serious, it cant even configure the network card!!!
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I see this with any company doing UI/UX stuff. They feel like after 3-5 years, whatever there is "stale", and needs to be revamped somehow, be it moving from skeuomorphic design to flat design, icon shape, and so on. When in reality, something like the UI from NeXTStep would be just as good now as it was back then, focusing on content instead of distracting colors, microinteractions, and other stuff which does nothing but waste compute resources. At most, maybe a base animation to show a button is moused
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> Here I'm sure they'll remove the Control Panel too soon, people will bitch and moan that this or that is missing or broken, and after a few months / years and several iteration, things will settle back to what it used to be with the Control Panel functionally.
Its been over 10 years already and Settings has never been able to work well enough to replace control panel.
Try configuring your IP address details in Settings...
Sure, you can change the text that is displayed in the text feilds in Settings to re
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> I get the motivation (searchable settings, etc, etc)
Control panel has been searchable for a long time.
> let's see how this goes five years from now.
Well, MS have been trying to replace it with settings for over 10 years now and settings still is broken to the point that you need to use control panel to do the stuff settings says it can do but cant.
Another 5 years isnt going to cut it.
Re: Best of luck. It will take a long, long time. (Score:2)
Makes sense for the majority of their users. Us techies will just have to look a bit harder.
Re: Best of luck. It will take a long, long time. (Score:3)
The Control Panel Works (Score:5, Insightful)
Settings is a convoluted mess. The goal seems to be to take or hide control from the users so everyone is forced to use windows as Microsoft decides, with as little customization as possible.
Re:The Control Panel Works (Score:5, Informative)
My take as well. It has been getting _harder_ to find things in Windows. I really do not understand what the motivation here is. Actually decreasing user control is a possible reason.
Re:The Control Panel Works (Score:4, Insightful)
It's because instead of starting from a clean slate MS have just been layering new over old for years. Device Manager is basically identical to the 95 version. Disabling a network adaptor uses the same interface as it did in XP if not earlier. Settings for the Language Bar are the same as they were since the damned thing started being turned on by default for no good reason.
What they've done over the years is to add new interfaces for new features as they become common; I usually point to the interface for wi-fi networks for this. Uncommon hardware features were and are configured with third party software. Remember when you had to have a Synaptics startup item if you wanted to scroll using a trackpad? Happy days. I'll bet you a pound that Windows 13 has native support for RGB lighting on keyboards and such.
I really do not understand what the motivation here is. Actually decreasing user control is a possible reason.
I was tempted to go down the Hanlon's razor route for this but it's probably more a case of laziness or inertia than stupidity. If you want to be generous you could think of it in terms of reverse compatibility, which in some respects has been a drag/price worth paying (delete as appropriate) on Windows development ever since the DOS era. If you are of a less charitable persuasion you could take the position that MS don't really care all that much about reworking the old stuff because a) they essentially have a monopoly on end-users, and b) most people never need to, for example, manually install a particular version of a device driver.
Let me offer an alternative to Hanlon in the form of Humphrey's Razor: "Never mistake lethargy for strategy." Microsoft doesn't care about home users tinkering, they get their money from the 'enterprise' people. IT departments are the ones who want to restrict users' access and MS happily add the tools to let them, because that's what they pay for.
I'm definitely in favour of Windows' settings being reformed and consolidated but only because I want some consistency. Ideally I'd want something like System Preferences.app from OSX and that's basically the same as the old-school Control Panel, but you'll have to pry my desktop shortcuts to network adaptors from my cold, dead fingers.
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It's because instead of starting from a clean slate MS have just been layering new over old for years.
Why would that be a good idea? Toyota doesn't re-engineer wheel bearings for every car they make.
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Because instead we have a random patchwork of old and new UI elements, half-baked features, functionality that has been stripped-out-but-not-really-here's-the-reg-hack-to-reenable-it, change for the sake of change, not decluttered just shuffled around... mess.
Trying to explain to an end user how to do something requires you to determine what update version of Windows they're running and where the option to do what they want might be buried this month as opposed to last month when it was somewhere else.
Every
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I spent 5 years as a CRM manager in Microsoft Federal - working the Army account. I had a project where I needed a technical writer as a consultant to throw against a client's work. I was told MSFT doesn't have those. I had to hire an external contractor.
True story.
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If the original devs that wrote all the stuff in control panel are no longer around, there is a good chance that *nobody* at microsoft could tell you how any of it works without referencing the source code.
Because of that, the only thing they can do is a facelift. When all you have is a hammer....
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We at Microsoft know better than you on how to do the day to day tasks of your life better than you, despite the fact you actually live it. How dare you question our superiority! We know what is best for your work flows. Questioning otherwise is treasonous!
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They want to be as bad as Apple about it?
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My take as well. It has been getting _harder_ to find things in Windows. I really do not understand what the motivation here is. Actually decreasing user control is a possible reason.
Ditto. More and more, it appears that MS is changing the Windows UI to accommodate casual or at least not advanced users. Interfaces are dumbed down so the ability to make some changes is either buried in a maze of menus / button clicks or is removed completely. Control Panel is a convenient, centralized location to start for making pretty much any meaningful system changes. The older Control Panel version of Add/Remove Apps is much simpler to use than the new Settings version. The new Installed Apps doe
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My take as well. It has been getting _harder_ to find things in Windows. I really do not understand what the motivation here is. Actually decreasing user control is a possible reason.
A "possible" reason? They want to remove user control as much as possible or else the user will shut off their data aggregation routines. The control panel will completely disappear the day they shove Recall out to the universe. It's about making sure Microsoft has full access to your computer, and making sure the end-user knows they need to buy stronger hardware if they want any processor/memory/storage capacity left to do the work they purchased the computer to do.
Re:The Control Panel Works (Score:5, Informative)
I agree - I use the control panel often because the "Settings" is totally braindead and lacks a lot of functionality that's necessary to perform the tasks I need to do.
Power management and networking settings are two of the major things I need to have a detailed control over in my work. One of the headaches in recent Windows releases that I have encountered is the "Turn on fast startup (recommended)" option that causes some devices connected to the computer over USB to be confused. Only other option for those cases have been to first boot, then reboot and then it works as it should.
If the control panel goes away then I need to figure out the necessary command line commands and registry hacks to do what I need.
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I'll betcha it's easy to do in Powershell. From what I can tell, most of the settings windows are just a graphic front end for Powershell anyway.
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hell, in that case.. just reprogram the OS... why bother with a GUI or a terminal/PowerShell?
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ChatGPT is pretty good at writing Powershell scripts too.
Of course, they always need to be vetted for correctness, but there's rarely any need to go into Control Panel these days.
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I think there are probably quite a few legacy options that have never been or will never be exposed by Powershell, but yeah, a lot of stuff is. I imagine it would be relatively easy to develop a Control Panel style frontend that replicated Settings app functionality but with the look and feel of "classic" Windows, just running PS commands in the background.
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Power management and networking settings are two of the major things I need to have a detailed control over in my work.
Fun fact here they've gone backwards. You used to be able to access the Power Management settings from the Settings menu in a tooltip on the right in Windows 10. Now you can't. You literally have to search for it or open the control panel to get it back.
Same for Colour Management.
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Isn't that the reason they are keeping Control Panel around, because Settings doesn't have EVERYTHING? Microsoft is giving people an early warning, "we will be moving more and more features from Control Panel to Settings, and at some point, we WILL finally get rid of Control Panel. You could see the direction it was going in, starting with Windows 8, then 8.1, then 10, and on to Windows 11, more and more features are being added to Settings, and removed from Control Panel as it goes.
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Hey, it worked for Apple.
Re: The Control Panel Works (Score:2)
Re:The Control Panel Works (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, also why does every settings page now have like 10 sub-sections and require you to scroll the screen and click blindly into subscreens to see all the options?
Why when you go back to a previous screen are your previously expanded sections now unexpanded again?
Why does every element need to be in 20pt text with more whitespace than the arctic?
Why does everything have to fit into narrow columns when widescreen monitors are the most common format?
Why does changing the IP configuration of an adapter bring up a narrow box that fills the entire height of the screen and you have to scroll to enter all the settings?
Basically, why do they insist on making their desktop OS look more like a phone OS every year?
They don't want users in control. (Score:2)
Meet (Score:2)
Meet the new CONTROL panel
same as the old CONTROL panel...
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Bad idea, of course it's happening (Score:5, Insightful)
The control panel is a location with shortcuts to (almost) everything and IT guy wants for general tech support. I guess we don't need that when we can navigate through multiple levels of poorly-organized screens instead.
I swear Microsoft devs have a betting pool going for how difficult they can make it to use Windows before we give up.
Hope they don't kill "God Mode" (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 11 "God mode" [bleepingcomputer.com].
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Mod up to 11!
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It turns out to be easier than that to implement. Just create a folder anywhere you want, named exactly [microsoft.com]:
God Mode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.
(copy/paste the entire line)
The comments list a few more handy Easter eggs too.
Re: "God Mode" - thank you (Score:2)
I had forgotten about that.
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what about 3rd party apps cpl files? (Score:3)
what about 3rd party apps cpl files?
will they have an way to add 3rd party apps to the new settings?
what about the few settings that are only in the o (Score:4, Insightful)
what about the few settings that are only in the old one?
Control Panel = Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
They must disassemble the very hierarchical Windows arrangement, where icon-based visual control and structures rule. You will have all the weakness of loose Android instead: endless sausages of text lines, where you have to identify and locate entries by recognizing between the similar lines of text, looking for that one, you need, musing forth and back where it could be hiding. It is disastrous design decision, it is cannibalism of Windows.
Cost to Users (Score:3)
So . . . SSDD? (Score:2)
New Devices and Printers (Score:3)
For those not in the know, they did this to Devices and Printers page in win 11 release.
Lots of organizations had to roll back to win 10 after update, because they couldn't troubleshoot printers properly without access to that page.
A few updates later, microsoft got the message and added it back in.
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They bounced back and forth for a few of them. Power Management and Colour Management are both settings which were available in Windows 10 from the Settings - it opened the traditional control panel style window. They are now gone, you need to actually open it by searching for it.
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No, that page was gone. They actually removed it entirely, you couldn't search for it. Even shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A} didn't work, as .cpl itself was gone for a while.
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Not certain what version of win11 you guys use, but if you right click on Devices and Printers, and click on the option to "Open in New Window" it'll open the original Control Panel program
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>in win 11 release.
M$ Say's It's Getting Rid of Control in Windows (Score:4, Funny)
Headline Typo: "Panel" is extemporaneous. FTFY
Use MMC instead (Score:2)
Use the Microsoft Management Console instead. It's that simple.
Take my Control Panel over my cold dead body (Score:3)
just type
dir /a /s *.cpl
dir /a /s *.msc
Joke's on you, BillG.
I'll believe it when I see it (Score:5, Interesting)
They've been saying this since they introduced Windows 10. They haven't done it, because the control panel contains a vast amount of configuration, because users need and want to access that, and because their whole concept of "Settings" is to dumb that down with something that doesn't show most of the configuration, on the grounds that most users don't need it most of the time, which is inherently in conflict with the fact that at least some users need something obscure some of the time.
There's only a few ways to square this circle:
- Leave Control Panel in place
- Push ahead, tell users the only way to access advance settings is through professional admin settings (system policies), and face massive backlash
- Try to compromise by extending settings, ever and again, and end up making setting much more complicated and hard to use than control panel ever was
What's more, Microsoft obviously knows this, and there's obviously been massive internal infighting over exactly this point: that's the most plausible explanation for why Microsoft keeps promising/threatening this, but so far has never actually done it.
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DON'T (Score:3)
And settings will work then? (Score:4, Informative)
Will they actually make settings work then?
I haven’t tried win 11 yet but everyone here where I work all knows that it's pointless configuring various things via settings as, they simply don’t work.
For example: Will it be possible to actually use Settings to configure the network parameters? Here where I work we all are well aware that we must use Control Panel to set IP details or to enable and disable DHCP as no matter what you do in settings, nothing changes. I mean how the hell did that pass testing?
It's been like that since Win 8.1! Certainly all through Win 10's life I have rarely used Settings to configure anything that actually needs doing RIGHT. Even naming the PC and joining a domain, "advanced settings". Also, what about deleting cached user profiles? Can’t do that in Settings. The only thing I have used it for is to control the antivirus (firewall stuff I use control panel) and windows updates.
Heck, you can’t even add/remove programs and features in settings as in many cases IT DONT WORK.
Right now Settings is a 1/5th implemented simplistic re-creation of control panel. MS have a LOT of work to do and they had more than a decade to do it already. How to I control the TPM? Bitlocker? Shares and open files? In fact, anything in "computer management"? Control Panel is how.
I've heard from on of our IT bods that Win 11 finally fixes the blatantly weird situation with network settings and that it actually, finally works as it should have done 10 years ago.
Even so, Settings is way too simplistic and incomplete. MS said they were replacing Control Panel over 10 years ago, with Settings, now they say it again. Well about time, but it better to what control panel did. I know that it will look shit, Win 10/11 UI is designed to look shit, but I can handle its wastage of pixels and monitor sizes we use in 2024 if it can do the same job.
No users asked for that disruption but.. (Score:3)
Please continue to break systems users trained on as if their decades of experience don't matter (which they don't to MSFT) and make Windows suck more.
Other than to gamers the Windows user experience matters little since most machines are used to run a key application or two.
The sooner irate gamers perfect the Linux gaming experience the sooner WOTD becomes less relevant for anyone but corporate victims.
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Settings still lacks most settings (Score:2)
The problem is that the "Settings" application is a dumbed-down version of the control panel, lacking most of the features.
For example, you can't set more than one IP address on a network adapter through "Settings".
Virtual network adapters (such as OpenVPN and VirtualBox Host-Only) and bluetooth (for IP over bluetooth) don't appear in the "Settings" either.
Settings still replicate the worst features of the control panel, however, such as the decade-old bug adding keyboard configurations/languages that I nev
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More obfuscation (Score:2)
If it's not broke, break it (Score:2)
Control Panel was too easy to extend (Score:3)
"Settings" is the result of a poorly thought through tactical reaction to a news cycle, not a strategic well-planned transition -- and it shows.
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There ave been excellent directory utilities around for a few decades, some freeware, and others shareware.
I have used Directory Opus since before I got a PC (it was first on the Amiga in the late 80's)
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One of the biggest bummers of switching to Linux as my daily driver is that I've never really gotten DirOpus to work well for me in wine. Alas.
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