Hide specific Control Panel items in Windows Vista



How many of the 45 different control-panel items do you actually use? Most likely less than half of them, at least for me. But what baffles me more is the fact that there’s loading time; and the more icons you have, the more loading time there is before you actually get to access the Control Panel properly. Thankfully, each individual icon can be removed with the Group Policy Editor.

1) Access your Group Policy Editor: Start > type gpedit.msc in the Search Bar

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2) Access the Control Panel options: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Hide Specified Control Panel Items / Show Specified Control Panel Items

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3) Enable the feature

4) Add the name of the item you wish to hide or show: Click on Show, then Add the names of the icons you wish to hide or show. You must enter it exactly the way it is shown in the Control Panel (case-sensitive.)

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5) Click Apply and OK. No reboot required.

I’ve always wondered why the control panel has load time. If anybody knows, please leave a comment.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Tips and Tweaks, Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Hide specific Control Panel items in Windows Vista”

  1. Ken Walker Says:
    April 19th, 2007 at 1:51 pm

    FYI, you can disable control panel applets in Vista Home Premium through the registry. I imagine you can do it in all Vista Home editions and Basic.

    The key is:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\don’t load

    The trick is that you have to know the name of the applet. I just did a search for *.cpl and usually the description is enough to figure out which .cpl file will turn off the applet. Then just enter a new string with a value of the applet name. For example: WacomTablet.cpl

  2. Ken Walker Says:
    April 19th, 2007 at 1:52 pm

    BTW, you do have to have the search options set to search system folders, etc… if that is where the applets that you want to turn off are located.

    Ken

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