Many of the Control Panel icons represent Control Panel extension files, which use the .cpl extension. These files reside in the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. When you open Control Panel, Windows 7 scans the System32 folder looking for CPL files, and then displays an icon for each one.
The CPL files offer an alternative method for launching individual Control Panel dialog boxes. The idea is that you run control.exe
and specify the name of a CPL file as a parameter. This bypasses the
Control Panel folder and opens the icon directly. Here’s the syntax:
control CPLfile [,option1 [, option2]]
CPLfile— The name of the file that corresponds to the Control Panel icon you want to open (see Table 1).
option1— This option is obsolete and is included only for backward compatibility with batch files and scripts that use Control.exe for opening Control Panel icons.
option2— The
tab number of a multitabbed dialog box. Many Control Panel icons open a
dialog that has two or more tabs. If you know the specific tab you want
to work with, you can use the option2
parameter to specify an integer that corresponds to the tab’s relative
position from the left side of the dialog box. The first (leftmost) tab
is 0, the next tab is 1, and so on.
Note
If
the dialog box has multiple rows of tabs, count the tabs from left to
right and from bottom to top. For example, if the dialog box has two
rows of four tabs each, the tabs in the bottom row are numbered 0 to 3
from left to right, and the tabs in the top row are numbered 4 to 7
from left to right.
Also, note that even though you no longer use the option1 parameter, you must still display its comma in the command line.
For
example, to open Control Panel’s System icon with the Hardware tab
displayed, run the following command (using the Start menu’s Search box
or the Run command):
Table 1
lists the various Control Panel icons and the appropriate command line
to use. (Note, however, that some Control Panel icons—such as Taskbar
and Start Menu—can’t be accessed by running Control.exe.)
Note
If
you find your Control Panel folder is bursting at the seams, you can
trim it down to size by removing those icons you never use. There are a
number of ways you can do this in Windows 7, but the easiest is
probably via group policies.
