Windows XP gives you three ways of using Control Panel. You can open it in Category view, where related items are grouped into sub-categories.

Click on one of these ­ say ‘Appearance and Themes’ and you get a rather confusing mixed bag of controls.

In the lower half of the right-hand pane are the conventional Control Panel items for Display, Taskbar, Cleartype and Folder Options. Above these are task-related links. These open the Display dialogue with a tab pre-selected.

At the left of the window are ‘See also…’ items for Fonts, Mouse Pointers etc, and further links to troubleshooters. In Classic View you get the traditional ‘all in together’ approach, with some items, such as Printers and Faxes or Network Connections, opening subfolders. In Classic view you also get the option of showing the contents in Icon, Details and other views, as per ordinary Explorer folders.

In either view, at the top level you can switch to the alternate view from the top of the left pane. If you don’t see this, but instead see a folder tree, then close the folder pane from its X button or click on the Folder button on the toolbar. If you don’t see the toolbar, go to View, Toolbars, Standard Buttons.

The third way is to show the Control Panel as a cascading menu from the Start button. Right-click on the Start button and go to Properties, Start Menu, Customize, Advanced, where you will find the option to display Control Panel as a link, a menu, or not at all. If you choose the menu option you can override this on a one-off basis by right-clicking on the Control Panel item and choosing Open.

All these methods have their pros and cons. Classic and Menu view give you instant access to everything, but you get a folder or menu cluttered with options you may seldom use. In Category view it can often take some trial and error to find the item that you do want. So, why not create your own slimline classic Control Panel?

To do this, open Control Panel in Classic view, then right-click on the Start button and choose Explore. Click on the Programs folder to open it, then create a new folder therein ­ we’ve called ours ‘My Controls’. Drag items from the ‘real’ Control Panel into your new folder and you’ll create shortcuts.

You can drag entire Control Panel subfolders, such as Printers and Faxes, individual items out of the subfolders or create your own subfolders in ‘My Controls’, allowing you to organise things just the way you want them.

You can also rename the shortcuts ­ it’s a click further from the Start button, but still quicker than ferreting through 30-odd items. If you do suddenly have an urge to visit one of the more obscure Control Panel outposts, such as Phone and Modem options, it will still be there in the ‘real’ Control Panel.

Repair XP, break Updates
Sometimes the only way to fix a damaged XP installation is to use the ‘Repair’ facility from the original Microsoft XP CD. You may find that this disables Windows Update, but there’s a cure. You’ll find the full explanation at Microsoft Knowledgebase Article 943144. Basically what has happened is that one of the update .dll files has become unregistered. You can correct this by opening a command prompt and typing:

net stop wuauserv

then press Enter. This stops the Automatic Updates service. Next, at the command prompt again, type:

regsvr32%windir%\system32\wups2.dll

followed by Enter again. This re-registers the .dll. If you’ve got the 64-bit version of XP then replace system32 with syswow64.

Finally, restart the Automatic Update service with:

net start wuauserv

followed by Enter, then type

exit

and press Enter to close the command prompt.