Tuesday, September 22, 2009

How to change the Control Panel category for an application

Many of us prefer the Classic view for Control Panel, but others like XP's Categories view. But can you move items from one category to another? This especially applies to programs that put their own applets in the Control Panel, sometimes not in the category where you'd expect it to be. Turns out you can do that, if you're comfortable with editing the registry. Here's how:
First back up the registry, just in case.
Open the registry editor and navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Control Panel \ Extended Properties \ {305CA226-D286-468e-B848-2B2E8E697B74} 2
In the right pane, each DWORD value is named after the full path to its Control Panel file. Find the one you want to move and double click it.
In the Value Data field, enter the value associated with the Category where you want to place it, from the list below.

Accessibility Options 0x00000007
Add or Remove Programs 0x00000008
Appearance and Themes 0x00000001
Date, Time & Language 0x00000006
Network & Internet 0x00000003
Other Control Panel Options 0x00000000
Performance & Maintenance 0x00000005
Printers & Other Hardware 0x00000002
Security Center 0x00000010
Sounds, Speech & Audio 0x00000004
User Accounts 0x00000009