Over the years Control Panel has been through several face lifts. For the most part it is not an IT Professionals best friend like it use to be. Once you give this little trick a try Control Panel will regain the respect it use to have. Say good-bye to the home user interface for ever.
Enabling the enhanced Control Panel was discussed on CNET.COM recently. CNET.COM has dubbed the new view ‘GodMode’. The write is great but there is an easier way which was pointed out to the folks at ie8blog.com and that is to create a shortcut on the desktop with the following.
C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
For all you Windows Vista users feel free to give it a try. This undocumented feature (or some are calling it an Easter Egg) has been around from some time since it works on Windows Vista. For Windows 2008 R2, no problems works like a champ and we suspect Windows 2008 (r1) will work as well.
What else do you get with Extended Control Panel?
a. Search is great, start typing and the list will dynamic filter. Very nice. Clear the filter to rest. This is on the top right.
b. Views work like you would expect. We like the Small Icon view which allows you to see more items and still maintain the descriptive tile.
References: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10423985-56.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
Give it a try you will not be disappointed.