Many of us know how to perform simple maintenance on our cars - changing oil, tyres, or windscreen wash fluid. But looking under the bonnet of Windows leaves the majority of people perplexed.

Over the next few pages we will take a look at the engine room of Windows: the Control Panel. You will learn how to tweak Windows to make it look and feel the way you want it to, diagnose faults, tell technical support engineers exactly what’s wrong with the PC and even fix simple problems yourself.

The more you learn about the role of the Control Panel in Windows, the better you will understand how your computer works.

Although we will be working with the most recent version, Windows XP, you will find that much of the advice over the next few pages can be applied to the Control Panels in earlier versions of Windows, such as Windows 98 and Windows Me.

XP users may also find that some of the buttons are not quite the same in their particular version - or perhaps are not there at all - depending on whether you have downloaded Windows Service Pack 2. Not to worry, though, all the important stuff here is relevant to everyone.

Taking a view
The first job is to choose how to look at the Control Panel. Click on the Start button and choose Control Panel from the list that appears.

Some of you will see a blue box, which groups settings by theme, while others will see the display that lists all the Control Panel icons (if you see much smaller icons to those shown, go to the view menu in the Control Panel window and select Thumbnails).

The view in the top illustration, called the Category View, was introduced in XP to make it easier for people to access settings by theme but it doesn’t offer the kind of flexibility that is found in the other version, called the Windows Classic View. In this feature, we are going to work in Classic View, so first make sure you have the correct view by using the following instructions.

To switch to Classic mode, open the Control Panel and click on the link in the left-hand panel marked Switch to Classic View. You will then see the Window change to contain a set of icons, each one relating to a different part of the system.