A guide to the Windows XP Control Panel

The view will be familiar to anyone who has used the Control Panel in Windows 95 or 98. To open one of these Control Panel icons, simply double-click on it.

All systems go
The most important icon in the Control Panel is the one marked System. It controls the most in-depth options regarding the workings of your computer. Open it up and you will see a dialogue box with seven tabs, the first of which is marked General.

This shows the operating system you are using, as well as details such as whether you have Service Pack 2 installed. It will also show some information about the computer, such as what processor it has, how fast it is and how much memory the computer has. These facts can be useful if you are diagnosing a fault or talking to a technical support person.

The next tab, Computer Name, is handy if you have a home network. You can set the computer’s name by clicking on the Change button. If someone else looks after the network, he or she will have set the name and you should not change it.
If you do not have a network, this screen will still appear, but changing the settings won’t have any effect.

The third tab, Hardware, enables you to examine and change settings for individual components of the computer, both internal and external. Clicking on the button marked Device Manager will display a window listing all the hardware inside and connected to your computer, including disk drives, monitors, network cards, modems, scanners and more, all arranged into categories.

To discover more about a category, click on the + sign next to it and it will expand to show all the relevant devices. Any device that has a yellow exclamation mark next to it is not working properly. You should note these down if you are going to talk to a support engineer or a helper on an online forum, as they can be used to resolve device conflicts.

You can easily cause your computer to stop working by changing Device Manager settings, so it is worth being extra careful here unless you are following specific instructions.

Clicking on the Driver Signing button lets you choose whether to accept drivers for devices that haven’t been given Microsoft’s seal of approval. Since many legitimate third-party drivers haven’t been passed, it’s worth leaving this on the default ‘Warn’ setting.