Chapter 6 -- Making Other Customizations

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Chapter 6

The Control Panel system folder contains a variety of icons to display dialog boxes (sometimes called property sheets) or folders that help you customize and configure different aspects of your Windows system. We've already seen a few of these dialog boxes and folders—Display Properties and Folder Options—in earlier chapters of this book. Others will be taken up in later chapters. In the present chapter, we'll look at Control Panel itself and at most of the Control Panel items that don't fall neatly into other chapters.

Some Control Panel items are available only when you're logged on as a member of the Administrators group (or some other high-powered group). If you try to use one of these items without the proper authority, you'll be politely—but firmly—rebuffed with an "insufficient privileges" message. Some Control Panel items let ordinary users examine the properties and settings but prohibit them from making changes.

Many changes you make in Control Panel affect only the user who is currently logged on. This allows you to customize your workspace without imposing your tastes on others who share your workstation. But it also means that global changes you want to make must be made individually for each user.