There are a vast number of options and settings related to the maintenance, adjusting, and tweaking of Vista. Control Panel is essentially a repository where these settings can be grouped together and organized in an attempt to make them easily accessible when needed. Other than being a storage and organizational facility it serves no other purpose. You don't actually 'do' anything with Control Panel. Think of it as a launch pad for applets, the name commonly used for small programs.

Control Panel Views

Category View - There are two views available for Control Panel; Category View and Classic View. The view shown below (Figure 01 - Vista Control Panel - Category View) is called Category View. This is the view you'll see if you open Control Panel via the Start Menu. The window is divided into several different areas. At the top are Back and Forward arrows to aid in navigation and next to them is the Breadcrumb Trail. These trails have been around a long time but they are new to Windows starting with Vista. To the right of the trail is a Search box.

The main portion of the Control Panel window is divided into two sections. For lack of better terminology or knowing what they are 'officially' called, I call the vertical section on the left the Task Section and the one on the right the Category Section. What you see in the Task Section depends on where you are located in Control Panel. At the top of the Task Section you can switch between Classic View and Control Panel Home at this level. As you drill down into Control Panel, a listing of the major categories is inserted between these two items with the selected category highlighted. At the bottom of the Task Section there is a [Recent Tasks] heading. This is a dynamic section, the items listed changing to reflect what has been done to the system most recently. As you can see in Fig. 01, the tasks I did most recently were 'Create and format hard disk partitions' and 'View hardware and devices'.

To the right of the Task Section is the heart of Control Panel, the Category Section. It defines ten (eleven if you're using a mobile PC) rather broad categories. If your Control Panel is missing some of the items shown in the screen captures it's likely due to the fact these captures were made on the Vista Ultimate version. For the most part the categories in Vista are roughly equivalent to what was in XP. The big difference is XP did not have the sub-links present under the main Category listings. I'm kind of torn about the sub-links. I can see where some users not overly familiar with Control Panel will find them useful, but at the same time I feel they give Control Panel a very cluttered appearance.

I assume the sub-links presented under each Category heading have been tested and found to be the most often visited locations, but there is much more that is hidden beneath each category. To get to the additional items you need to dill down through the different categories and hope you made the proper initial category selection. Remember, you can use the bread crumb trail at the top to navigate in conjunction with the trails arrows to fine tune your travels.

Figure 01
Vista Control Panel - Category View

Classic View - If the Category View discussed above, along with the associated digging drown through multiple menu levels doesn't thrill you, it might be time to consider Classic View. Rather than using categories, Classic View presents the items in an alphabetized list format as shown in the screen capture (Figure 02 - Vista Control Panel - Classic View) below. There are no categories here, just the individual items you would find if you drilled down through the menus.

The basic Control Panel window layout remains the same in Classic View with the forward and back buttons, the bread crumb trail, and the search box. However, except for the search box they are pointless because once you click an item it will open in another window or dialog box, not the same window where Classic Control Panel is displayed. The Task Section display on the left is now static rather than dynamic, always displaying the [Control Panel Home] and [Classic View] options. The Recent Tasks section is eliminated in Classic View. If desired, it is also possible to change the display and organizational properties of Classic View. Right click on a blank area inside where the icons are located and use the [View], [Sort By], and [Group By] items to customize the display.

 Accessing Control Panel - A few years ago I had a user write to ask how to access Control Panel. You may be laughing at the idea of someone not knowing this basic bit of information, but they were a total neophyte with an inherited system that had been modified by the previous owner so Control Panel didn't show up on the Start Menu. I always try and keep that letter in mind when I'm putting an article together. What may be obvious to the majority can totally baffle some users, so here are the most common ways to access Control Panel along with some not so common methods.