Vista - Some Control Panel items have gone missing

Vista Ultimate 32-bit on Dell Precision laptop.

Today when I opened Control Panel I see that there are 6 fewer items than
were there yesterday. I know that one of them was Indexing Options but I
cannot identify the other 5 off the top of my head. How can I get these
items back? Why did they disappear?

--
And loving it,

-Qu0ll (Rare, not extinct)
_________________________________________________
Qu0llSixFour@xxxxxx
[Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me]

Hello Qu0ll,

You might check with these two tutorials to see if the Control Panel icons were hidden, or if you can add them back.

Control Panel - Hide Icon

and

Control Panel - Show Specific Icons Only

Hope this helps,
Shawn

"Brink" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:0ec9cf80c4b523a9c36c10931b1b379b@xxxxxx-gateway.com...Thanks Shawn for the links but unfortunately they didn't resolve the
problem - the icons are still missing. I basically need to know what's
missing and how to get them back.

Any other ideas?

--
And loving it,

-Qu0ll (Rare, not extinct)
_________________________________________________
Qu0llSixFour@xxxxxx
[Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me]

Just as a start, the items that appear in the Control Panel are all in
C:\Windows\System32 and have a .cpl extension.

The first thing I would check is that they are still there. Here is my
list:

appwiz.cpl
bdeadmin.cpl
bthprops.cpl
collab.cpl
desk.cpl
FirewalLcpl
hdwwiz.cpl
inetcpl.cpl
infocardcpl.cpl
intl.cpl
irprops.cpl
joy.cpl
main.cpl
mmsys.cpl
ncpa.cpl
nvcpl.cpl
powercfg.cpl
RTSndMgr.cpl
sysdm.cpl
TabIetPC.cpl
timedate.cpl
wscui.cpl

Yours may differ, but at least it's a start.

However, I think the problem will be a setting in the registry, which
controls which control panels items are shown. I can't help with that, but
have a vague memory that things like the Group Policy editor can affect it.

Sorry I can't be of more help. I'm sure someone knowledgeable will dive in
soon.

SteveT

Qu0ll,

In addition to Steve's post, you might run a "sfc /scannow" (no quotes) command to see if it can find and fix and bad or missing system files.

System Files - SFC Command

Hope this helps,
Shawn

I'm running Vista Home Basic (no gpedit.msc). I tried changing the settings
in the registry, but I still can't seem to hide any icons. Is this possible
in Vista Home Basic? Or am I just doing it wrong?

- Henson

"Brink" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:0ec9cf80c4b523a9c36c10931b1b379b@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Hello Henson,

Yes, you should be able to do this in Vista Home Basic using METHOD TWO to hide the icons. Double check to make sure that you typed the icon name exactly as it appears in the Control Panel to hide it. If you have the Control Panel open, then you will need to close and reopen it to see the changes.

Hope this helps,
Shawn