Chapter 24. Controlling Windows Vista

In This Chapter:

• Familiarize yourself with Vista’s Control Panel’s contents
• Locate Control Panel options with the Search box
• Learn where the Control Panel entries reside throughout Windows
• Practice safety when working with the Control Panel’s system-related options
• Try out several Control Panel features
• Walk through the many Control Panel groups

The Control Panel provides access to most of Windows Vista’s hardware and software settings. The Control Panel is usually where you go when you need to adjust something about Windows, such as your screen’s appearance, or to set up a microphone for speech recognition.

Many of the Control Panel’s features are available from outside the Control Panel itself. Over the years, Microsoft has made the Windows Control Panel easier to understand so that users can locate what they need faster and get back to work. You typically won’t spend much time working with the Control Panel. Some Control Panel options you might never use. The most important thing you should know about the Control Panel is what it contains so later you’ll know that when, for example, you need to adjust something about your mouse, such as the double-click speed, you’ll find the doorway to your mouse settings in the Control Panel.

This chapter gives you an overview of the Control Panel and familiarizes you with its features.

Get Familiar with Your Control Panel

Throughout the earlier chapters of this book you’ve already worked with the Control Panel. That’s because the Control Panel covers such a wide range of hardware and software settings that it’s difficult to cover most subjects related to Vista without visiting the Control Panel occasionally. For example, in Chapter 3, “Clicking Your Start Button,” you worked with the Control Panel when learning ways to modify your Windows Start menu behavior.

Figure 24.1 shows the Control Panel. You access the Control Panel from your Windows Start menu. Click the Start button and the Control Panel appears on the right side. Selecting the Control Panel entry opens the Control Panel window.

Figure 24.1. Access your computer’s hardware and Windows software settings in the Control Panel.

As you can see, the Control Panel’s entries are grouped by function. If you need to make security changes to your computer, the first place to look would be the Control Panel’s Security group. Click Security to display further Control Panel settings related to security, such as your Windows firewall and parental controls.

The Control Panel is a window that brings together, in logical and related groups, settings for your computer’s hardware and software. You won’t find options for specific programs such as Adobe Illustrator in the Control Panel, but you will find options for Windows-related software such as the clock in your taskbar’s notification area and hardware-related settings such as your printer options.

---

---

As I said earlier in this chapter, Microsoft changes the Control Panel with each version of Windows in an attempt to make the Control Panel easier to access and find what you need. If you’re familiar with and prefer the older, Windows 98–style of Control Panel, the style that shows the Control Panel items listed one after another without major grouping, click the Classic View link to display your Control Panel options, listed alphabetically, in an icon view as shown in Figure 24.2.

Figure 24.2. The Classic view shows your Control Panel items in an ungrouped, more detailed order.

---

---

Use the Search Box to Locate Control Panel Options

Some users aren’t always sure whether the Control Panel holds the options they want to see. For example, when working with speech recognition, it’s not intuitive that the speech recognition training wizard is located inside the Control Panel’s Ease of Access group. If you just read Chapter 23, “Speaking to Your Computer,” that knowledge might be well-known to you now, but if it takes you six months or so to use speech recognition again and you need a refresher course, will you remember that the speech–recognition-related routines are to be found inside the Control Panel’s Ease of Access group?

The Search box that permeates most of Vista’s windows, described in Chapter 13, “Finding Information All Over Windows,” also enables you to locate items in the Control Panel. When you first open the Control Panel to either the Vista view or the Classic view, there don’t appear to be enough items to warrant a search. Nevertheless, some options and settings are buried beneath some of the Control Panel’s groups and their locations aren’t always obvious until you learn the Control Panel’s contents more fully.

Therefore, you can type what you want to find in the Control Panel’s Search box and Vista displays all the Control Panel items related to your search text. For example, typing speech in the Search box narrows down the Control Panel’s options to only two groups—Speech Recognition Options and Ease of Access Center—as shown in Figure 24.3. Both Control Panel groups include speech recognition settings.

Figure 24.3. Use your Control Panel’s Search box to locate out-of-the way Control Panel options.

---

---

---

---

Many Control Panel Options Appear Elsewhere

You now know that the Control Panel groups hardware and Vista settings so that you can adjust the behavior of things that happen as you use your computer. Many of the Control Panel features are available from other places, too. Microsoft’s goal for Vista is to give you access to what you need when you need it. If you often need a Control Panel option when working elsewhere in Windows, Vista puts a link to that Control Panel option elsewhere.

For example, the Welcome Center includes a Personalize Windows option that, when you click it, opens the Control Panel’s Appearance and Personalization group’s Personalization window shown in Figure 24.4. This same window is available from within the Control Panel when you open the Appearance and Personalization group and then click the Personalization option.

Figure 24.4. Many Control Panel options are available in several locations.

Vista’s guided help system often takes you to a Control Panel option. For example, if you search Vista’s help using the search term change screen resolution, a help window (like the one shown in Figure 24.5) appears that explains what screen resolution means and includes a link you can click to open the Display Settings window. The Display Settings window is located under your Control Panel’s Appearance and Personalization group and appears when you click that group’s Adjust Screen Resolution link.

Figure 24.5. The Help system often takes you to the Control Panel setting you need.

Stay Alert When Using Your Control Panel

Some of the Control Panel’s options are advanced computer settings that can cause problems if you or someone else sets certain options incorrectly. But that danger doesn’t mean you need to shy away from the Control Panel out of fear that you’ll harm your computer.

Many of the Control Panel’s options are extremely simple to understand and change depending on your needs. For example, the colors used in Windows and your Windows desktop background picture (called wallpaper) should be set to your liking. Changing your desktop’s picture won’t harm any operating system setting and if you don’t like the picture you choose, it’s simple to change it back to what you had before.

Most of the more critical and potentially dangerous Control Panel settings appear in these two groups: System and Maintenance and the Hardware and Sound groups. In each of these groups you can change settings that may render certain components unusable as might occur if you change a device’s driver setting. Despite that, you’ll still want to access these groups from time to time even if you don’t want to change any critical settings. For example, the Hardware and Sound group includes AutoPlay settings that control the way a CD or DVD plays when you insert the disc into the drive. Settings such as AutoPlay are easily reversible and don’t set any system options that could cause something to malfunction if set incorrectly.

---

---

Use good judgment when making changes to the functions available within Control Panel and you should be just fine. If you know what you want to do and you see the Control Panel option to do it, make the change without fear of harming something in your system. If something more elaborate needs looking at, such as a device driver for an attached peripheral like a modem, you might opt to use more caution and make changes only when you have instructions on how to do so. For example, many modem instruction manuals tell you how to download and install the latest drivers for the modem, and often times you’ll update the driver from within the Control Panel’s Hardware and Sound group’s Device Manager option. As you can see from Figure 24.6, the Device Manager includes several strange-sounding devices whose purpose isn’t always obvious.

Figure 24.6. Some items inside the Control Panel require extensive knowledge or detailed instructions before you can safely make a change.

A Control Panel Walkthrough

As a Vista user, you need to know what the Control Panel offers, but you don’t necessarily have to be an expert in all the Control Panel’s contents. If you’ve read through the earlier chapters of this book, you already know what some of the Control Panel options are for and you’re already comfortable with making changes to those options when needed.

The most important thing to understand about the Control Panel is that it generally contains settings that you’ll access when you want to adjust the way a device behaves or when you want to adjust the way Windows looks or behaves. For example, Windows makes sounds as you work within it and if you want to adjust or turn off certain sounds, the Control Panel should be the first place you look.

Take a moment to open the Control Panel and study its contents. You won’t work within your Control Panel daily, and sometimes you might go months without ever opening the Control Panel, but you need to have a general idea of what is there. To give you an idea of the Control Panel’s contents, the following sections describe each major Control Panel group and discuss the chapters in this book that focus on specific Control Panel entries when appropriate.

---

---

---

---

System and Maintenance

Before clicking the System and Maintenance Control Panel option, notice that beneath the System and Maintenance group are two links: Get Started with Windows and Back Up Your Computer. In an attempt to put often-used items and options where you can locate them quickly, Vista provides these two links that you can click without first opening the System and Maintenance group. If you opened the System and Maintenance group you would see items related to getting started with Windows and backing up, but the upfront links mean you don’t first have to open the entire group if you want to perform either of those two tasks.

Clicking the System and Maintenance Control Panel option opens the System and Maintenance window shown in Figure 24.7. The links in the upper-left pane are links to the other Control Panel groups. You don’t have to return to the Control Panel’s main window to go from System and Maintenance to the Ease of Access group, for example. Just click the Ease of Access link to save a step. The Recent Tasks list in the lower-right pane includes any Control Panel options you’ve recently visited, and you can return to any of those by clicking one of the links there.

Figure 24.7. The Control Panel’s System and Maintenance group includes options related to updating and backing up your computer.

The following describes each of the System and Maintenance entries:

• Welcome Center—Provides quick access to common programs and settings that you’ll often use when you begin using Vista. Chapter 2, “Exploring the Welcome Center,” discusses the Welcome Center’s features.
• Backup and Restore Center—Provides links to Vista’s backup and restore wizards so that you can save your disk data and protect it from disasters that could cause data loss. Chapter 35, “Protecting Your Data and Programs,” shows you how to back up and restore your computer’s disk drives.
• System—Displays an overview of your computer settings and provides links to advanced system-related features such as hardware settings. Most of the settings in the System group are advanced and require that its users understand driver and hardware settings.
• Windows Update—Displays the status of your Vista system, telling you whether any system updates are needed by going online and comparing the latest updates to your system, as shown in Figure 24.8. Chapter 27, “Managing Your Windows Security,” discusses more about how you can apply updates to keep your system running smoothly and as safely as possible.

Figure 24.8. Keep your operating system up-to-date by checking for the latest updates or automating Vista so that updates apply automatically.

• Power Options—Determines what happens when you press your computer’s power button, shows how your system uses energy-saving features, and offers ways that can extend your laptop battery usage to get the most out of each laptop’s charge. Chapter 34, “Saving Power with Windows Vista,” explains how you can use the Power Options settings to get optimum performance with the energy levels you want to use.
• Indexing Options—Provides settings that specify how Vista’s searching features work in the background to locate files and provide quick searches.

---

---

---

Security

Clicking the Security option opens the security-related Control Panel group of options, as shown in Figure 24.9. Here you’ll find options that help protect your computer’s integrity. Chapter 27 discusses each of the Security group’s options in more detail and explains how you can maximize the safety of your computing experience.

Figure 24.9. Security must remain in the forefront of the Windows Vista user’s priorities to keep computers running properly.

The following describes each of the Security entries:

• Security Center—Provides a one-stop overview of your computer’s current security settings, allowing you to see what’s lacking. For example, Figure 24.10’s Security Center shows that the computer’s malware protection is lacking. Malware is bad software that can invade your computer from your Internet connection through such things as email attachments that contain viruses.

Figure 24.10. The Security Center warns you of any potential computer weaknesses.

---

Network and Internet

Clicking the Network and Internet option opens the network-related Control Panel group of options, as shown in Figure 24.11. Here you’ll find options that enable you to set up and control the way your computer interacts with any attached network. The network might be external, such as the Internet, or internal, as you’d find in a home or business environment where a network has been established for the various computers on site to share files and printers.

Figure 24.11. Maintain and control your computer’s access to other computers with the Network and Internet options.

Chapter 36, “Combining Vista, Networks, and the Internet,” as well as subsequent chapters devoted to using your computer in the connected world of the Internet, explore many of the options you find in the Control Panel’s Network and Internet window.

The following describes each of the Network and Internet entries:

• Network and Sharing Center—Provides a graphical picture of the network that your computer is connected to as well as shows the Internet connection if you’ve set one up. The Network Center also provides troubleshooting tools you can use to monitor your network activity and to repair problems that you might be having.
• Internet Options—Gives you access to Internet Explorer’s security and control dialog boxes.

---

Hardware and Sound

Clicking the Hardware and Sound option opens the hardware-related Control Panel group of options as shown in Figure 24.12. If you need to adjust something on any device attached to your computer, such as a game controller or your mouse, you’ll find a way to access that device’s settings here. In addition to devices stored on your computer, you can adjust your computer’s sound settings. These sound settings relate not only to your sound-producing hardware, such as your internal sound card, but also to Vista’s sound settings that control the various sounds Vista makes when certain events occur.

Figure 24.12. Adjust the settings on all your hardware devices from within the Hardware and Sound Control Panel group.

You don’t need a walkthrough of each of the Hardware and Sound group because you know what a printer, mouse, and keyboard (as well as the other devices listed in the group) are.

---

---

---

---

Many of the entries inside your Control Panel’s Hardware and Sound group are familiar to you because you’ve seen them in the other Control Panel groups you’ve read about in previous sections. For example, the Power Options and Device Manager options appear in the window. Vista constantly tries to make available what you need, so many items overlap throughout the Control Panel groups. The Device Manager, for example, is directly related to both your hardware and also to your Windows system because it’s device driver software that allows a hardware component to interact with Windows. That’s why Microsoft chose to include the Device Manager both here in the Hardware and Sound group as well as in the System and Maintenance group as you saw earlier in this chapter.

Programs

Clicking the Programs option opens the Programs group window shown in Figure 24.13. Here you’ll find options that enable you to view, manage, install, and remove programs as well as purchase additional programs online that you can download to your computer.

Figure 24.13. You can manage all your programs from the Control Panel’s Programs group.

User Accounts and Family Safety

Clicking the User Accounts and Family Safety option opens the User Accounts and Family Safety group window shown in Figure 24.14. Here you’ll find options related to setting up and maintaining user accounts as well as the parental control options that you read about when you learned about the Security group earlier in this chapter.

Figure 24.14. Manage user accounts and adjust parental controls from your Control Panel’s User Accounts and Family Safety group.

The following describes each of the User Accounts and Family Safety entries:

• User Accounts—Provides an interface for you to add, change, view, and delete user accounts on your computer. You can set up users with limited or full Administrative privileges here. Chapter 26, “Separating Users Gives Each the Access They Need,” describes how to manage the user accounts on your computer.
• Parental Controls—Gives parents a means to control what children and other users of the computer can access. You also saw this entry in your Control Panel’s Security group.
• Windows CardSpace—Allows you to manage digital security cards that send encrypted data about yourself to sites that you approve. Such digital ID cards will make logging into secure web sites safer and faster but web site designers must begin adopting the Windows CardSpace feature in larger numbers for the feature to be helpful to most users.

Appearance and Personalization

Clicking the Appearance and Personalization option opens the group window shown in Figure 24.15. There you’ll find options related to your screen, taskbar behavior, Sidebar, and other Vista elements that determine how your computer projects information and modify the way you interact with your computer.

Figure 24.15. You can change the way you and Vista interact with one another from the Appearance and Personalization window.

The following describes each of the Appearance and Personalization entries:

• Personalization—Gives you access to screen settings such as the Vista color scheme, screen resolution, and desktop background wallpaper image.
• Taskbar and Start Menu—Enables you to customize your taskbar and Start menu’s behavior. Chapter 6, “Taking the Taskbar to Task,” explains the associated features of this entry.
• Ease of Access Center—Opens the Ease of Access Center window where you modify your computer’s accessibility options. Chapter 22, “Making Windows Vista More Accessible,” describes the accessibility options.
• Folder Options—Provides settings and options that determine how your Explorer windows behave.
• Fonts—Gives you control over the fonts installed on your computer. You can add and remove fonts from this entry and Windows programs such as Microsoft Word will have access to the set of fonts you manage.

---

Clock, Language, and Region

Clicking the Clock, Language, and Region option opens the group window shown in Figure 24.16. Here you’ll be able to adjust your computer’s clock and date (found at the right of your taskbar), add additional clocks in case you travel and want to keep up with multiple time zones, and change regional information such as the default language and keyboard your computer assumes.

Figure 24.16. Update your Windows clock and time zone region from the Clock, Language, and Region window.

---

---

Chapter 33, “Configuring Windows Vista,” describes more of these settings.

Ease of Access

Clicking the Ease of Access option opens the Ease of Access group window in which you can manage your accessibility options as well as your Speech Recognition settings.

The Ease of Access Center provides you with options that enable users with special needs to utilize a more appropriate Windows interface. Chapter 22, “Making Windows Vista More Accessible,” explains how you can take advantage of these features. Chapter 23 explains how to talk to your computer to control it and dictate without using your keyboard.

Additional Options

The final Control Panel group is Additional Options. The Additional Options group differs from computer to computer, depending on the programs installed. For example, if your computer has Apple’s QuickTime media player installed, you can access the QuickTime options and behavior settings from the Control Panel’s Additional Options group. Of course, those same settings are available from the QuickTime program itself, but the Control Panel’s group gives you the ability to modify QuickTime options without actually starting the QuickTime program.

Chapter Wrap-Up

You have now seen a major overview of your Control Panel’s contents. The Control Panel provides an interface for modifying and managing your computer’s hardware and Windows Vista settings. Organized in related groups, the options you find change Vista’s behavior. Some of the settings, such as the Device Manager, are advanced and should be changed only by knowledgeable users. Other options, such as the Speech Recognition options located in the Ease of Access group, control the way you interact with Vista.

Knowing every option located in your Control Panel is unnecessary. They are there and await you when and if you ever need them, but many users will never select many of their Control Panel’s options. Some advanced users (and some who are simply adventurous!) might play around with the Control Panel more than other users in an effort to see the extent to which they can customize Vista to perform in a unique way.

Now that you’ve seen an overview of the Control Panel, you know in general what awaits you there and you can adjust your Control Panel’s settings when and if you need to. The next chapter, “Setting Up Windows Program Defaults,” explains how to use some of these Control Panel settings to customize Vista to your needs.