How to Master Windows Vista's Control Panel – Part 3

Windows Vista includes the same Display Settings and Network Connections applets as you see in Windows XP, but they are harder to find in Vista. This can be made easy by tweaking the Windows Registry. But you have to keep this in mind that before making any changes to the Registry use System Restore to back up your settings. This can be done by going to the System Restore into the Start menu Search box. Now click Start, and type REGEDIT in the search box and press Enter to launch the Registry Editor. Now browse to HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Control Panel \ don't load and right-click on desk.cpl in the right-hand pane. Now click Delete > Yes to restore Display Settings and sim­ilarly delete ncpa .cpl to restore the Network Connections applet. Now when you open your Control Panel you will see that your favorites are back again.

The Auto play applet included in Windows Vista is a useful addition, delivering a sensible way to decide what your PC should do when you insert an audio, video or a game CD/DVD. Click Control Panel, select Hardware and Sound if you're using the cat­egory view, then click Auto play to launch it. Now you can set up media player or any other player you want to use that will be launched to play a particular file type. For example you can click on the DVD movie list and select the option Play DVD Movie using Windows Media Player. Auto Play offers many other options and you can choose any one of them do proceed whenever a CD/DVD is inserted in your optical drive. For example if you click the Audio CD list, you'll find Windows Vista can be set up to automatically rip music from an audio CD/DVD as soon as you insert it into the Drive.