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Quickly launch your favorite Control Panel items

Like most things Microsoft, there's more than one way to accomplish a task. Now me personally, I do not like the set up of the control panel. Every time I have to try and find something on a new computer, the first thing I have to do is change the view category to icons. But I tell you there is an easier way to get things done (actually two ways...). By knowing the Control Panel Tool commands you can quickly get to some of the items either from the Run dialog box or from the Windows Start Menu search bar.

By using the Run dialog box (Windows Key + r) you can access the "control" commands to quickly get to various settings or control panel items. For a full list of the control commands see Microsoft's table of simplified control syntax.

What I've found to be an even faster method, is to access some of these control panel settings by knowing their .cpl extension. Some of these include access to the Network Connections, or Add/Remove Programs, or System Properties. These can be used from the Windows Start Menu search bar (Windows Key + start typing the cpl item). For the full list of *.cpl items see this Microsoft knowledge base article.

Some of my favorites include:
ncpa.cpl - Network Connections
appwiz.cpl - Add/Remove Programs
sysdm.cpl - System Properties
 Hope this helps with your multitasking needs.
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