If you are anything like me and use the control panel endlessly then you will love this little trick that allows you to make a shortcut to the control panel. I have looked around and as yet I cannot find a normal shortcut to the control panel so I used this trick.

First you need to make a control panel shortcut in the quick launch menu;

  • Open start
  • Click on control panel
  • Drag the icon to your quick launch area

Once you have setup a shortcut to the control panel in your quick launch area you can now use a direct shortcut to the panel from your keyboard.

In Vista they have set shortcuts from your quicklaunch using the windows key, with winkey+1 being the first quick launch button and so on.

So if your control panel icon is the third quick launch icon then just type winkey+3 and you have a shortcut to the control panel.