Put Anything you want into the Control Panel

Sometimes applications add icons to the Windows control panel. Ever wondered how they do it ? Wonder no more because you can now do the same with Your CPL, a small utility compatible with Windows XP, 2000, ME and Windows 98. The package contains two files that have to be moved into the system directory of the Windows installation. In the case of Windows XP it would mean that both files, YourCPL.cpl and YourCPLconfig.txt need to be moved into the system32 directory.

The YourCPLconfig.txt contains the information of which applications are added to the Windows control panel. By default a link to the Registry is added. The format for adding new entries is always the same. It begins with the path to the executable, a name for the application, a description and possible command line options. Each application has be to added in a separate line.

The line for adding Regedit to the Control Panel looks like this: c:\windows\regedit.exe Regedit Registry editor. You also need to make sure that you press TAB after each parameter, if you do not do this you will receive a CPL error showing up in the Control Panel.

Control Panel

As you can see it is relatively easy to add new applications to the Control Panel. Possible applications that I think are useful to add are Autoruns, Process Explorer, True Crypt and another uninstaller (Revo Uninstaller for instance).