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Have you ever heard of CPL extensions?
If you open Windows Explorer and search for all *.cpl files,
at a minimum you would see at least as many entries in the search result details as you
have applets displayed in your control panel.
Yes! .cpl stands for Control Panel.
If you do not want to navigate to any of your favorite entries, you can create a shortcut to
that entry's corresponding cpl file.
The list below shows a number of control panel and cpl file names:
| Accessibility Options |
access.cpl |
| Add Hardware Wizard |
hdwwiz.cpl |
| Add or Remove Programs |
appwiz.cpl |
| Display Properties |
desk.cpl |
| Game Controllers |
joy.cpl |
| Internet Properties |
inetcpl.cpl |
| Mouse Properties |
main.cpl |
| Network Connections |
ncpa.cpl |
| ODBC Administrator |
odbccp32.cpl |
| Phone and modem Options |
telephon.cpl |
| Power Options |
powercfg.cpl |
| Region and Language Options |
intl.cpl |
| Sound and Audio Devices |
mmsys.cpl |
| Speech Properties |
sapi.cpl |
| System Properties |
sysdm.cpl |
| Time and Date Properties |
timedate.cpl |
| User Accounts |
nusrmgr.cpl |
Now if you want to add/delete any of these entries from the Control Panel you can do this a number
of different ways:
- using the Registry Editor
- running the Group Policy MMC called gpedit.msc or
- running TweakUI from the PowerToys, if you have them installed.
TweakUI is by far the easiest method, whereas gpedit requires some more work.
From TweakUi, you simply click on control panel and select/deselect entries in right panel
as per your choice.
From gpedit.msc (to run gpedit, goto START-RUN and type gpedit.msc):
- Navigate to
User Configuration
Administrative Templates
Control Panel
- Right-click on Show only specified Control Panel Applets.
- Click on enabled and then click on the show.
In this list you won’t see anything if this is the first time, because you have to fill the list first.
- Click on add and type the complete file name as
given in the list above.
Obviously this process is a bit more complicated, especially if you are a new to using this tool.
And if you are a registry fan, you can do this by navigating to:
| Hive: |
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel |
| Key: |
Don’t load (Add this key if not already present) |
| Name: |
<cpl filename>
(1 entry for each Control Panel you do NOT want to load)
(Add as many as you need.) |
| Type: |
REG_SZ |
| Value: |
No |
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