If you're going to be working with Windows as a user or as an administrator of the system, you will find a number of useful utilities are located in the Windows Control Panel. Here's our Windows 11 desktop. And this is very similar to the way that Windows 10 would operate as well. To start the control panel, we'll go down to the search option. We'll start typing in control. And you can see it fills in and puts control panel right at the top. If we select that, we then see our control panel options. By default, the list of options available in the control panel are shown in a category mode. This does hide a number of the names associated with the different control panel applets. So, I'll tend to change the view from category to something like small icons or the one that I like the most, the large icons. This allows you to see every utility associated with the control panel and they are all listed in alphabetical order. One of the control panel applets you'll need to know about is the one for internet options. This provides you with a list of options that are available from your builtin internet browser. You'll notice that there is information about browsing history on this general tab. You have information about how you want the browser to appear as far as colors and language and fonts. And then you have information about what is displayed in the individual tabs. Under the security tab, we have the options to define what particular rights and permissions are allowed depending on where we're connected to the internet. For example, if we are on an internet zone, then you will have much more security than if you're somewhere on a local internet zone. You can also set rights and permissions if you are connecting to a site that you consider to be trusted and a different set of options if this is a restricted site. The privacy tab inside of our internet properties allows us to allow or disallow access to certain sites and how we might deal with the cookies associated with that site. And we also have the option here to change how the pop-up blocker will work inside of our browser. The content tab gives us information about how certificates are handled inside of the browser and it turns on or turns off the autocomplete process. If you're connecting to the internet over something other than a direct connection, you may want to modify some of the settings within the connections tab. This is how you can set up an internet connection that might be dialup or through a VPN. And you can put all of those parameters into these settings. This is also where you might want to define a proxy server, assuming it's a proxy server that does not work in a transparent mode. You'll find that information under LAN settings, and you'll see there is an option here for automatic configuration of those proxy settings, or you can manually specify a proxy server and add the address yourself. The next option in our internet settings is for programs. This defines how add-ons are configured inside of your browser to extend the capabilities of the browser itself. We can also define certain programs that will be used by default if you're clicking on particular links on a web page. And lastly, we have the option for advanced. This is a detailed list of configuration settings that allows you to modify the ways that accessibility is used in the browser. We have information about the type of protocols that might be used and you can define how the browser will react depending on what type of site you're visiting. There may be times when you need to configure settings on a printer or modify the way a particular device is configured. One of the ways to access these configuration parameters is through the option for devices and printers. Anything you're connecting to across the network or devices that are directly connected to your computer will be found in this devices and printers window. This is a very useful front end, especially for users that need access to the configuration parameters of a device, but they don't want to have to go through the detailed breakdown that's available inside of device manager. You can even see that the icons within devices and printers make it very easy to identify and select devices that are on your network. In my control panel, I simply select devices and printers. And you can see a number of different devices appear. Some of these devices get a generic icon. Other devices are identified as a microphone and it shows an icon of a microphone or a printer. And you can see the specific printer names are listed underneath. If you want to modify any of these, you can right mouse click on any of these devices, configure the options, or change some of the properties of the printer associated with that icon. Often when you're installing applications, it's a single application installation program that you're using that you may have downloaded directly from the internet. But if you'd like a summary of all of the applications that have been installed on your computer, you can choose the option for programs and features. This will show you all of the installations that you've made. And from here, you can choose to uninstall or reinstall different aspects of that application. This gives you a list of all of the applications that are installed. You can see the date that you've installed it on and how much size it's taking on your drive. You can also right mouse click on these applications and choose to uninstall the app to remove it from your computer. There's also an option on this programs and features page to turn Windows features on or off. And if we click on that option, it will list a number of different Windows features. You can see there is a large number of them listed. So if you wanted to install a new feature, for example, you wanted to install internet information services hostable web core or you wanted to uninstall features such as the media features, you can click on that category and click okay, and it will either install or uninstall those features. If you're doing any type of network troubleshooting, then you'll probably spend some time inside of the network and sharing center control panel outlet. This covers not just your wired network connections, but your wireless connections as well. And from inside of this list, you can choose to look at detailed configurations of every network adapter. In the control panel, you'll find network and sharing center is listed. In this particular case, I have a single active network connection. It's an Ethernet connection. And if I click that, it will bring up the Ethernet status. And from here, I can see exactly how this particular Ethernet adapter is configured. If you'd like more details about the properties of that adapter, you can click the properties option and it brings up a list of all of the different configurations for that adapter. For example, if you wanted to see the IP version 4 information for this adapter, we can simply click on that option and choose properties. From here, you can see the IP address, subnet mask, any DNS server configurations, or you can see if this adapter has already been configured for DHCP. When you first sit down at a Windows computer, it may not be obvious what specific version of Windows is configured in this system. Under the control panel, you can choose the system outlet and get an overview of the system configuration, including the addition of Windows that's running with the version information, and you can see information about the hardware configuration, including the processor, installed RAM, and other details of the operating system. In our Windows 11 control panel, we'll choose the option for system. This will bring up a separate window which shows us in the main window information about this system. We also have options along the left sidebar that gives us details into information such as Bluetooth and devices, apps, accounts, gaming accessibility, and other options. You'll also notice in the middle of the page are related links. You can view domain or workg groupoup information for this device, view the system protection settings. If you choose the advanced system settings option, it launches a different dialogue box for the system properties. And under the advanced tab, you have options to change the performance of this system, including things like visual effects and virtual memory. If you would like to change how much virtual memory is being used by your system, you can click that settings option and choose the advanced tab within those performance options. Inside of here, you can change the virtual memory paging file. You can decide how large that file is and if you want to make changes to that, you can modify it inside of the virtual memory dialogue box. Like many operating systems, Microsoft includes a firewall that is built into the Windows OS. This is called the Windows Defender Firewall, and this allows you to prevent access to your computer from outside of your system. This is separated into two different categories. one for the private networks that you may be connected to and another one if you're connected to a guest or a public network. For example, you might have a completely different set of security policies if you're inside of your private network, but the moment you go to a coffee shop or connect externally to an internet connection, you may want to use a different set of security features. This is something integrated into Windows and turned on by default. So you don't have to do anything extra to use the capabilities inside of Windows Defender Firewall. If you want to make changes to any of these settings, you can find it under the control panel in Windows Firewall. You'll find the firewall settings under the control panel items and Windows Defender Firewall is listed under one of those applets. You can see that it launches all of the configurations for the Windows Defender Firewall. And since this device is also connected to a Windows domain, we have a different set of security policies that we can set when we're connected to a domain network. Notice that we have a number of options along the left side to turn on and off the firewall, restore the defaults in case you happen to enable a feature that blocks important traffic, and then you have advanced settings that you can choose. And we will go into the advanced settings of Windows Firewall in a future video. An icon you might not see inside of your control panel is the mail outlet. This applet will not appear unless you have installed a supported email client. For example, if you've installed Microsoft Outlook onto your computer, then the mail icon will appear in your control panel. If it does appear, you can start it and get options of setting up email accounts and directories, modifying the data files that are used by that email client, or setting up particular profiles for your email settings. If you choose the email accounts option, you'll be presented with a number of email accounts that have been configured on the system and you can enable, disable, or change the properties of each of those accounts. You also have an option for data files inside of that link where you can define where the files are being stored for all of your email. If you find that this is taking up too much room at the location where it's currently located, you can change the location of that file and redirect everything to that new directory. These days, we rely on not only hearing information coming from our computer, but we often need to input sound into our computer, usually using a microphone. You can manage both the input and output of sound from the sound outlet within the control panel. This allows you to modify playback options, such as your speakers, or you can choose the recording tab and modify options for your microphone. If you have multiple playback devices or multiple recording devices, you can specify which one of those devices will be the primary or default settings under the sound outlet. Your control panel also has an option for your local user accounts. These would be accounts that are stored on your local computer and they're not part of your active directory domain. From here, you can modify or add account name information and specify the type of account that this might be. For example, you can configure an account to be a regular user or an administrator account. This is also where you would go to change things like the password associated with this account or modify the icon representing this account name. And if you're doing some type of file encryption on the system, you can manage those encryption certificates from the user accounts outlet. Let's bring up the user accounts on this computer. By default, it will show the user account that is currently logged in. And in this case, it is the professor account. From here, you can change things associated with your account control so that you can define when the account control settings would appear on your screen. You can also choose the option to manage all user accounts on this system. On this particular computer, you can see that I only have one user on this computer and that user is myself configured as both a user and an administrator. If I want to modify the file encryption certificates, we can choose that option on the left side and you can modify how those encryption certificates are stored on your system. The Windows operating system doesn't know how to interact with any of the hardware on your system unless there is a device driver that makes that connection between the operating system and the hardware. You would find this list of device drivers under the Windows device manager in your control panel. This will allow you to add devices, remove devices, or modify configuration settings specific to these device drivers. This will tell you if Windows is able to see and use that piece of hardware, and you'll be able to make detailed configuration changes if you need to. Inside of our control panel, we can choose the option for device manager. This will bring up a separate window with a list of all of the device categories for our system. You can see for example there are cameras, disc drives, keyboards, print cues, printers, system devices, and a lot more. Let's look at configuration settings for things like our display adapter. You can see this is a parallels display adapter. And if I right mouse click on it, I can choose to update the driver, disable the device, uninstall that device driver, or scan for any changes that we may have made to the hardware. If we look at the properties for this device driver, we will see a similar set of properties for this and other devices on our network. It has a general tab, a driver tab, details, events, and resources. The general tab gives us information on what this device happens to be. This will give us a summary of what this device is. And you can see under the device status, it will tell us if the Windows operating system is able to use that device properly. Under the driver tab, you can view details for this specific device driver. This is the driver date and the driver version. And if you wanted to know exactly what files are associated with this driver, you can click on driver details and it shows you the entire Windows path for that system file. The next tab over shows us information about the details for this driver. In this case, we only have one value associated with this device driver. If you're wondering if this device driver has ever been updated, you can click the events tab and it shows you every event associated with this device driver through the years. And lastly, we have the resources tab that tells us exactly memory ranges, interrupts, and other important hardware information about the configuration of this device driver. If you ever search for things at the search menu within your Windows, you may notice that you get responses back very quickly. It's able to find detailed information that may be hidden within a file that's well inside of your operating system. So, how is Windows able to find that information so quickly? That's because Windows has already gone through the process of indexing all of those files on your system and it's simply referencing that index to be able to quickly find that information. If you'd like to modify how Windows is providing that index, you can change that configuration under the indexing options. Under the control panel, we choose the option for indexing options. It opens up a new window and inside of this window, you can see the default settings. It's going to include locations for your start menu and under our users folder. It's going to index everything in those particular folders unless we have set specific exclusions for different types of folders. If you'd like to modify those, you can click the modify option at the bottom and change the specific folders that are being indexed or not indexed on your computer. Perhaps we'd like to index all of these folders, but instead specify certain types of files that we don't want to index. Under the advanced option, we can choose the file types tab and we can select exactly what type of files would be good to index and what type of files we do not want to include in that search index. If you're a system administrator, there are a number of utilities inside of the control panel that can help you monitor and maintain this computer. You'll find them under a setting called administrative tools, or in most recent Windows versions, it's called Windows tools. Inside of this Windows tools section might be options for computer management, registry editing, task manager, task scheduler, and much more. The administrative tools or windows tools can be found in the control panel. It will either be listed as administrative tools or on later versions of Windows, you'll find the option for Windows tools. This will bring up a separate window that gives us a list of administrative functions that we can use to keep this system up and running. The Windows file explorer allows us to access individual files and folders on our system. And there are a number of different options you can configure from the file explorer options inside of your control panel. One of these might be the general options where you can configure how the folders can be browsed when you click an item, what happens, and you can specify privacy options as well. You'll find the file explorer options under that named link inside of your control panel and it will bring up a separate window with three tabs across the top for general view and search. The general tab determines how file explorer can be used. Not only what's shown in the different windows, but what happens when you single click or doubleclick a particular file. Under the view tab, you have the option to customize what is displayed or what is hidden inside of the file explorer. And lastly, under the search tab, you can make changes to what information will be searched in file explorer. You can choose whether to include system directories, whether you would like to look into compressed files such as zip files to find information within those compressed files. And you can specify whether you're going to look at just the file names or whether you're going to look into the detailed content of every file. Windows also gives us access to many power options not only for our laptop computers, but we can also change power options on our desktop computers as well. You'll find these options under the control panel under the option marked power options. For example, you might be able to set a configuration where your system will hibernate. That means it will take all of the open documents that you're using and all of the applications in use and will save that information to the drive associated with your system. This is very common on laptop computers because it will save everything to disk and even if you lose the battery power, you will still be able to recover where you left off. This is something that's commonly used by the fast startup feature inside of Windows as well. Since it does take a number of seconds to be able to pull the information off of your storage drive and put it back into memory when you power on your system, you may instead want to choose the sleep or standby option. Instead of taking your applications and your data and moving it to a storage drive, it simply keeps everything in the memory of your system. This requires constant power to be able to maintain that particular state. Although it is not a lot of power, it can still take away from the battery on your system. If you're planning to swap out your battery or the battery that you're using is very low, you might want to use the hibernate function instead. And this also gives you a great deal of customization over how every component inside of Windows is using power. In our control panel, we would choose the option for power options. And this tells us that there are two current power plans that you can choose from. one that is labeled balanced and the other one that is labeled parallels. So if we would like to change how the display is powering off, we can wait five minutes, we can wait 45 minutes or customize the exact time that we would like to use. And if you never want the display to turn off, you can choose the option for never. You can also have the system automatically put itself to sleep. And again, if you'd like to make it so this system never goes to sleep automatically instead of setting a specific time frame, you can select the option for never. If you'd like to have even more granularity for the power settings, you can choose the advanced power settings, which opens up a separate window. And from here, you can modify settings for the hard disk, for background settings, the sleep options, PCI Express settings, and settings for your display. If you're on a laptop, this allows you to also customize what happens when you close the top lid of your laptop. Does the laptop stay on? Do you put it into a sleep mode or hibernate mode? You get to control that from the power options. You can also change settings for your USB interfaces. You may have devices connected to your computer that need to always maintain power from the USB port, and you can configure and manage that process inside of power options. You also have the option to change the way your system is starting up. There's a Windows feature called fast startup that's able to bring Windows up and running very quickly when you press the power button to turn on. In reality, it's able to provide this faster startup process because Windows never technically completely shuts down. If you need to completely shut down your operating system each time you turn it off, you may want to turn off those fast startup settings within the power options in the control panel. And Windows also includes a number of accessibility features that allows you to use the operating system even easier. In the control panel, you'll find these options inside the ease of access center. In here, you can do things like start a magnifier, change your onscreen keyboard options, have a narrator that tells you what's on the screen, or set up a high contrast display option. So, if you need a little bit of extra help in using your operating system, you might find some very useful features inside the ease of access center.