The new Microsoft motto seems to be “make everything useful at least one extra step more difficult”. This certainly has been true for all but the most commonly used features with Office 2007’s Ribbon interface. It’s also true with many of the control panels in Windows Vista.

One control panel I use regularly is “Network Connections”.

Using Vista’s GUI interface in non-Classic mode, you have to go to Start > Control Panel > View network status and tasks > Manage network connections.

In Classic View, go to Start > Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Manage network connections.

You can also use the Search box (or the Run option if you have unhidden it) and enter ncpa.cpl.

I’m not sure which is the less appealing route—all that clicking or trying to remember a cryptic filename.

What I did to make life a little bit easier was use the search method, and when the control panel appeared at the top of the search results pane, I right-clicked it, chose “Send To”, then “Desktop (create a shortcut)”. A shortcut appeared on my Desktop, which I cut so I could paste it somewhere easier to find (like at the top of my Start menu). Depending on where you save it, Vista might require administrative rights to paste the shortcut.

Special thanks to Andre De Costa’s Teching It Easy blog for this useful information.

I do not know why the developers at Microsoft felt the need to move already somewhat obscure and hidden features to even more obscure locations in Windows Vista. Maybe they figure that it’s helpful to techs to slow them down to stretch out their billable hours or build-in even more job security for system admins by making things more and more difficult for average users.

Under the Windows 9x family, to add programs or folders to the “Send To” context menu, you just plunked a shortcut into “C:\WINDOWS\Send To“.

This was far too easy, and the average user had no problem customizing Windows the way they wanted. When Windows 2000 (followed by XP and 2003) came along and moved user preferences to the “C:\Documents and Settings” folder, I thought that was a good idea. After all, the Windows folder gets very full, and the average user could cause him or herself problems by deleting the wrong thing. Thus, the Send To folder was moved to “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Send To“. This was still pretty easy and intuitive for anyone who actually wanted to use this handy feature.

Along comes Windows Vista. The familiar “Documents and Settings” folder structure has been replaced by a shortcut (with more shortcuts from there). Security has been tightened to the point that a user with standard user permissions probably can’t even make changes to his or her own settings without a lots of frustration (I haven’t tried, because standard user permissions are SO limited as to make Vista barely usable for anyone who has even moderate experience with Windows.).

So how does one edit the Send To menu? It should be obvious (but only if you work for Microsoft). You go to the new Search box in the Start menu, type in “shell:sendto” (without quotes) and press your ENTER key. In a moment, the Send To folder will appear, and you can edit pretty much as normal (though depending on what you try to put in there, Windows may throw up some annoying permission questions).

That is just so golly-darned intuitive, I smacked my forehead wondering how I could have been so stupid as to not come with “shell:sendto” on my own. Yeah right.

Maybe it is me, or maybe other people don’t use the Send To feature very much, because there were hardly any search engine hits for this beloved feature (of course, I did use Windows Live search, and it rarely compares to Google for finding useful information), and absolutely no results on Microsoft’s Website or knowledge base.

Thank goodness for Andre’s blog (which includes pictures) for cluing me in on this great feature.

It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it’s really annoying. Your Windows Desktop refreshes (often after a program crashes), and all the icons on your Desktop and in the Start Menu have been reset to generic icons that all look alike. Sometimes it’s a temporary thing, and restarting the computer will fix it. Other times it takes a different tool.There are a number of nifty tools available from Microsoft’s web site called “Power Toys”. These are a bunch of little applets that tweak or enhance the way Windows works. There are things like fancier calculators, image re-sizers, and ones that are a little difficult to explain (but do really neat things). These Power Toys are version-specific (i.e., you can’t use the Windows XP Power Toys under Windows 98 for example). The WinXP version is available here.

Out of all the Power Toys that are available, TweakUI is probably the most useful tool of all. This TweakUI gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more. It comes in two versions, one for standard 32-bit processor machines (e.g., Celerons, Pentiums, etc.) and also for 64-bit Itanium processor machines. It runs under Windows XP Service Pack 1 or later, as well as Windows Server 2003.

To restore your Desktop and Start Menu icons, download the appropriate version of TweakUI, install it, and then run it. In the left-hand column at the bottom is an option to “Repair”. Click it, and you will see that “Rebuild Icons” is the selected option in the pull-down menu. Click the “Repair Now” button, and all your icons should magically reappear. It will also reset the order of your icons (which could be slightly annoying if you have carefully lined up your icons up in a particular pattern).

This handy tool can also fix problems related to a messed up Fonts folder, your Unread Mail Count, and many other things. Feel free to poke around and see what else you can tweak. Just remember that all Power Toys are unsupported by Microsoft. I’ve never had a problem with them, but if you do, Microsoft cannot bail you out (and neither can we).

So tweak at your own risk.