Tips and Tricks

Tips & Tricks

** Rebuild Control Panel **
Here's something I just learned a few weeks ago. I had a customer that couldn't get into Control Panel. When he clicked on Control Panel, the computer would try for awhile, then just give up. There was no error message, but the computer would hang, and have to be rebooted. He claimed he didn't have any other problems. He had tried a few troubleshooting methods and checked for viruses, but came up with nothing. He was to the point where he was planning on reloading Windows. We made an appointment for the next day.

I happened to be talking with another tech friend of mine that night, and the topic came up. He told me of an article he had read and we spent an hour going through old mags looking for it. Here's how it goes:
Every utility in the Control Panel resides in the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory and has a .CPL extension. If you suspect one of these utilities is corrupt and causing problems with the Control Panel, do a search using 'Find Files and Folders'. Type *.CPL in the 'Find what' text box.

The .CPL files that come up are the Control Panel Utilities. By double-clicking one of these files, the actual utility opens. If you double-click on one and it hangs the computer, that's the offending file!

I found three corrupted .CPL files on the customer's computer the next day. I deleted them and replaced them from the .CAB files on his Windows disk using the EXTRACT command. Problem solved.

Yeah, I know, its not something you're going to use a lot. Sometimes things just fall into place.

I apologize again for the late NewsLetter. Take care, and I hope you have a very Merry Christmas!

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That's it for this month. If you have any questions, comments, ideas or suggestions for the NewsLetter, or our WebSite, please email me at: suggestions@pccomputernotes.com

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