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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

XP introduced a "new" control panel arrangement by default, but you could easily revert to a simple folder view. Windows 10 is a mess today because of the overlap between the classic Control Panel and the new settings app, but there was nothing like this back then.

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> XP introduced a "new" control panel arrangement by default, but you could easily revert to a simple folder view.

It's been 15+ years? since I regularly used Windows so maybe I'm mis-remembering this, but I definitely remember there being quite a few WTF moments working with the Windows XP Control Panel. Lots of changes for no apparent reason, and many weird/ jarring things. Its definitely not a Windows 10 thing because I've spent roughly 15 minutes using Windows 10.

The proper thing to do in the Windows XP control panel is to switch it to Classic View. No more trying to figure out what category something is in and being wrong half the time, just the same options as you had in Windows 98, plus a few new ones.

Even in Classic View, there are admittedly some items that have user interface styles that date back to Windows 3.1 (one example being part of the Fonts area), so there are some oddities. But switching to Classic View takes care of a lot of them.

I believe what you suggest is exactly what I did when I used XP, but at this point, the only proper thing is to not use XP unless you are doing some kind of air-gapped retro setup.

Tho that only helps with certain things, depending on localization.

For example, the German version of Windows XP renamed the entry for "Software" to "Programme und Funktionen"/"Programs and functions".

It's something that even over a decade later keeps catching me off-guard because for the longest time I was so used to look for "S like software".

And Windows 10 did it again with the whole "App" thing where I'm still somewhat confused if that's the new name for software, or if I'm installing some kind of integrated gadget from the Windows store or what the actual difference between these two is supposed to be.

> the whole "App" thing

https://i.imgur.com/TTRyEOT.png

The Control Panel vs Settings thing is definitely annoying, and confusingly certain things exist in both; one of which is date and time

I had a machine that refused to sync NTP until I went into Control Panel, even though everything looked fine in the new Settings

One of the first things I do is to pin the control panel and a couple of its icons to start so I can avoid the settings way of getting there.

appwiz.cpl run this from RUN or command prompt

I didn't know about that. As I have it set up though, I can hit the windows key and type 'fea' (from Programs and Features) and then enter.

you couldn't entirely revert the control panel to "classic". Win2K pioneered moving a bunch of stuff out of the control panel entirely and into Computer Management (which you could get to by right clicking on the computer icon)

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