Complete List of Canonical Names of Control Panel Items

Canonical Names of Control Panel Items

As of Windows Vista, each Control Panel item is given a canonical name for use in programmatically launching that item. This topic lists each Control Panel item, its canonical name, and its GUID.

Windows 7 Control Panel Canonical Names

The following canonical names are defined for Control Panel items in Windows 7. All names are also valid on Windows Vista unless specified otherwise. Not all Control Panel items are available on all varieties of Windows and some Control Panel items might appear only when appropriate hardware is detected. These canonical names do not change for different languages. They are always in English, even if the system's language is non-English.

Control Panel Item	Canonical name	GUID
Action Center	Microsoft.ActionCenter (Windows 7 and later only)	{BB64F8A7-BEE7-4E1A-AB8D-7D8273F7FDB6}
Administrative Tools	Microsoft.AdministrativeTools	{D20EA4E1-3957-11d2-A40B-0C5020524153}
AutoPlay	Microsoft.AutoPlay	{9C60DE1E-E5FC-40f4-A487-460851A8D915}
Backup and Restore	Microsoft.BackupAndRestore (Windows 7 and later only)	{B98A2BEA-7D42-4558-8BD1-832F41BAC6FD}
Biometric Devices	Microsoft.BiometricDevices (Windows 7 and later only)	{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428}
BitLocker Drive Encryption	Microsoft.BitLockerDriveEncryption	{D9EF8727-CAC2-4e60-809E-86F80A666C91}
Color Management	Microsoft.ColorManagement	{B2C761C6-29BC-4f19-9251-E6195265BAF1}
Credential Manager	Microsoft.CredentialManager (Windows 7 and later only)	{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70}
Date and Time	Microsoft.DateAndTime	{E2E7934B-DCE5-43C4-9576-7FE4F75E7480}
Default Location	Microsoft.DefaultLocation (Windows 7 and later only)	{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}
Default Programs	Microsoft.DefaultPrograms	{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966}
Desktop Gadgets	Microsoft.DesktopGadgets (Windows 7 and later only)	{37efd44d-ef8d-41b1-940d-96973a50e9e0}
Device Manager	Microsoft.DeviceManager	{74246bfc-4c96-11d0-abef-0020af6b0b7a}
Devices and Printers	Microsoft.DevicesAndPrinters (Windows 7 and later only)	{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A}
Display	Microsoft.Display (Windows 7 and later only)	{C555438B-3C23-4769-A71F-B6D3D9B6053A}
Ease of Access Center	Microsoft.EaseOfAccessCenter	{D555645E-D4F8-4c29-A827-D93C859C4F2A}
Folder Options	Microsoft.FolderOptions	{6DFD7C5C-2451-11d3-A299-00C04F8EF6AF}
Fonts	Microsoft.Fonts	{93412589-74D4-4E4E-AD0E-E0CB621440FD}
Game Controllers	Microsoft.GameControllers	{259EF4B1-E6C9-4176-B574-481532C9BCE8}
Get Programs	Microsoft.GetPrograms	{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4}
Getting Started	Microsoft.GettingStarted (Windows 7 and later only)	{CB1B7F8C-C50A-4176-B604-9E24DEE8D4D1}
HomeGroup	Microsoft.HomeGroup (Windows 7 and later only)	{67CA7650-96E6-4FDD-BB43-A8E774F73A57}
Indexing Options	Microsoft.IndexingOptions	{87D66A43-7B11-4A28-9811-C86EE395ACF7}
Infrared	Microsoft.Infrared (Windows 7 and later only)	{A0275511-0E86-4ECA-97C2-ECD8F1221D08}
Internet Options	Microsoft.InternetOptions	{A3DD4F92-658A-410F-84FD-6FBBBEF2FFFE}
iSCSI Initiator	Microsoft.iSCSIInitiator	{A304259D-52B8-4526-8B1A-A1D6CECC8243}
Keyboard	Microsoft.Keyboard	{725BE8F7-668E-4C7B-8F90-46BDB0936430}
Location and Other Sensors	Microsoft.LocationAndOtherSensors (Windows 7 and later only)	{E9950154-C418-419e-A90A-20C5287AE24B}
Mouse	Microsoft.Mouse	{6C8EEC18-8D75-41B2-A177-8831D59D2D50}
Network and Sharing Center	Microsoft.NetworkAndSharingCenter	{8E908FC9-BECC-40f6-915B-F4CA0E70D03D}
Notification Area Icons	Microsoft.NotificationAreaIcons (Windows 7 and later only)	{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9}
Offline Files	Microsoft.OfflineFiles	{D24F75AA-4F2B-4D07-A3C4-469B3D9030C4}
Parental Controls	Microsoft.ParentalControls	{96AE8D84-A250-4520-95A5-A47A7E3C548B}
Pen and Touch	Microsoft.PenAndTouch (Windows 7 and later only)	{F82DF8F7-8B9F-442E-A48C-818EA735FF9B}
People Near Me	Microsoft.PeopleNearMe	{5224F545-A443-4859-BA23-7B5A95BDC8EF}
Performance Information and Tools	Microsoft.PerformanceInformationAndTools	{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC}
Personalization	Microsoft.Personalization	{ED834ED6-4B5A-4bfe-8F11-A626DCB6A921}
Phone and Modem	Microsoft.PhoneAndModem (Windows 7 and later only)	{40419485-C444-4567-851A-2DD7BFA1684D}
Power Options	Microsoft.PowerOptions	{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}
Programs and Features	Microsoft.ProgramsAndFeatures	{7b81be6a-ce2b-4676-a29e-eb907a5126c5}
Recovery	Microsoft.Recovery (Windows 7 and later only)	{9FE63AFD-59CF-4419-9775-ABCC3849F861}
Region and Language	Microsoft.RegionAndLanguage (Windows 7 and later only)	{62D8ED13-C9D0-4CE8-A914-47DD628FB1B0}
RemoteApp and Desktop Connections	Microsoft.RemoteAppAndDesktopConnections (Windows 7 and later only)	{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B}
Scanners and Cameras	Microsoft.ScannersAndCameras	{00f2886f-cd64-4fc9-8ec5-30ef6cdbe8c3}
Sound	Microsoft.Sound (Windows 7 and later only)	{F2DDFC82-8F12-4CDD-B7DC-D4FE1425AA4D}
Speech Recognition	Microsoft.SpeechRecognition (Windows 7 and later only)	{58E3C745-D971-4081-9034-86E34B30836A}
Sync Center	Microsoft.SyncCenter	{9C73F5E5-7AE7-4E32-A8E8-8D23B85255BF}
System	Microsoft.System	{BB06C0E4-D293-4f75-8A90-CB05B6477EEE}
Tablet PC Settings	Microsoft.TabletPCSettings	{80F3F1D5-FECA-45F3-BC32-752C152E456E}
Taskbar and Start Menu	Microsoft.TaskbarAndStartMenu	{0DF44EAA-FF21-4412-828E-260A8728E7F1}
Text to Speech	Microsoft.TextToSpeech	{D17D1D6D-CC3F-4815-8FE3-607E7D5D10B3}
Troubleshooting	Microsoft.Troubleshooting (Windows 7 and later only)	{C58C4893-3BE0-4B45-ABB5-A63E4B8C8651}
User Accounts	Microsoft.UserAccounts	{60632754-c523-4b62-b45c-4172da012619}
Windows Anytime Upgrade	Microsoft.WindowsAnytimeUpgrade	{BE122A0E-4503-11DA-8BDE-F66BAD1E3F3A}
Windows CardSpace	Microsoft.CardSpace	{78CB147A-98EA-4AA6-B0DF-C8681F69341C}
Windows Defender	Microsoft.WindowsDefender	{D8559EB9-20C0-410E-BEDA-7ED416AECC2A}
Windows Firewall	Microsoft.WindowsFirewall	{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423}
Windows Mobility Center	Microsoft.MobilityCenter	{5ea4f148-308c-46d7-98a9-49041b1dd468}
Windows SideShow	Microsoft.WindowsSideShow	{E95A4861-D57A-4be1-AD0F-35267E261739}
Windows Update	Microsoft.WindowsUpdate	{36eef7db-88ad-4e81-ad49-0e313f0c35f8}

Finding that specific Group Policy Setting

Have you found yourself searching for the right place whenever your in a stituation where you need a specific Windows setting, an Office behavior or a third party application – and you want to control that with Group Policy?  How do you know if there’s a GPO for what you need and where it’s located?

Well, there are a couple of steps you can use.

Check whether there’s a built-in GPO

Your first step probably is to check if there’s a ready-to-go GPO you can deploy. For that, you can fire up GPMC and check there. But other than browsing through the GPEditor tree or using the GPMC search, there are other two additional options. Those are good when you are with a customer and can’t get your hands on a machine with GPMC loaded. The first option is one of the coolest Azure apps I’ve seen: http://gps.cloudapp.net. GPS stands for Group Policy Search – you can search for GPOs by name or browse the GPO tree “virtually”. You can get it from any machine with internet access. If you’re more the download-n-go kind of guy, someone who sticks with references, there’s a GPO reference Excel spreadsheet: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=18c90c80-8b0a-4906-a4f5-ff24cc2030fb&displaylang=en. They contain the setting names, the registry location the settings change, the path to browse and the “supported on” information. All searchable – and filterable, excel-like. That should get you going.

By now, you should know if there’s a built-in GPO you can use. In case you found what you were searched, consider yourself done with this article. If not, read on.

Check whether there’s a custom ADM(X) template

So no luck with the built-in stuff. Good thing there’s the community and fine places you can find and download ADM(X) templates from. ADM(X) templates are simply templates you can add to Group Policy Editor – based on the information in the template, the correct registry settings are forced on the client. Reading this, you probably noticed that this only works for registry settings, so it’ll only add “Administrative Templates” settings. There are ADM template files for pre-Vista GPMC administrators and ADMX template files for Vista+ GPMC administrators. Vista+ GPMC understands ADM, too, but XP’s GPMC only eats ADM template files. So be sure to search and find for the correct format.

For Microsoft Office, there are downloadable ADM(X) template files around: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=92d8519a-e143-4aee-8f7a-e4bbaeba13e7 and http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=64b837b6-0aa0-4c07-bc34-bec3990a7956&displaylang=en. No biggie to find them. ADM templates can be imported in GP Editor by clicking the “Administrative Templates” node and choosing “Add/Remove template”. For ADMX, you’ll have to either copy the files to the CentralStore or to the local PolicyDefinitions folder and re-open the GPEditor. It appears that I have created a link list for ADM template files in the past: http://www.frickelsoft.net/blog/?p=38, you may find other ADM template using Bing or Google or any other search engine. If you’re familiar with German, at least a bit, you can check Mark Heitbrink’s Group Policy site in German. He has a ton of ADM template files you can download and adjust: http://www.gruppenrichtlinien.de/index.html?/adm/Beispiele.htm. #24 for Adobe Reader is a real pearl :-) Also, I’ve found http://www.appdeploy.com has some good tips for you. They not only have tips and tricks about zero-touch installations, unattended installer packages and script installations, I’ve seen a couple of good ADM templates there. Worth a try!

Tracing the software setting’s steps

Still not lucky? Okay, time to get our hands dirty. When you change a setting, close the application and re-open it, the setting needs to get stored somewhere. Pretty likely that’s some place in the registry or some ugly .ini file. You only need to find where. There are tools that help you with that. Regshot is one of these great tools for free. You create a “before” snapshot of the registry, then open your app, change the setting, close it and make a “after” snapshot. You then compare the two and find the changes the software setting obviously had to make: http://sourceforge.net/projects/regshot/. There are other tools out there. Process Monitor (formerly FileMon and Regmon) is a great tool that helps you trace file and registry operations and filter for applications: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb795533.

Once you’ve found the location and the values a switch flip in your application changes, you’ll just have to deploy them via Group Policy. There are numerous ways – but today, you don’t want to use most them anymore. For a registry change, you can

(1) Write a custom ADM template file and import it: http://gandalf50.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/modifying-the-office-2010-adm-templates-to-allow-more-trusted-locations/
(2) Create a registry export on a sample machine and import it via a script: “regedit.exe /s myReg.reg”
(3) Use GP Preferences Registry settings to deploy the changes all at once!

Clearly, option 3 is the way to go. Creating custom ADM templates is… well, not too easy. Scripting is … yeah, so 1990.

How to Add AD user accounts or groups into the local Administrators group with GPO

How to use Restricted Groups?

( - or: How to Add AD user accounts or groups into the local Administrators group with GPO)

This article describes the feature “Restricted Groups” in Group Policy. This feature enables you - as the administrator - to configure group memberships on the client computers or member servers. You can add user accounts to groups on client machines that are in the scope of the policy.

As there are many questions about this in the newsgroups, I will come up with an example that shows how to put a group of Active Directory users into the local Administrators group on the clients.

For this article, I assume that you already created a global security group containing all users that shall become local Administrators on some client computers. In my example, the group is called “localAdmins”. The target (= client) computers reside in a specific OU.

If you’re using the Group Policy Editor, you navigate to the OU where the client computers reside and right-click it. Choose “Properties” and “Group Policy” where you create a new Policy and click “Edit”. You then navigate to:

Computer ConfigurationWindows SettingsSecurity Settings and then right-click “Restricted Groups” and choose “Add Group”.

You simply add the created group by clicking You simply add the created group by clicking “Browse..” or typing the group name into the box.

After clicking “OK”, another  window opens up, where you can find two boxes. The upper box, saying “Members of this group”, the lower one saying “This group is a member of”. In my case above I am adding a group called TechSupport.

If you added users or groups into the “Members of this group” box, you would advise the Restricted Groups feature to put the users and groups you selected into the localAdmins group. Restricted Groups would then replace the current members of the localAdmins group with the users and groups you filled into the box. Please understand that it replace them by wipeing existing users out of the local Admins group.

Since we do not want to add users or other groups to our existing group, but instead want to add a new  group to the local Administrators group on all of our clients, we have a look at the lower box - labeled “This group is member of”. We click “Add” and type in the name of the group that  we want  added to the localAdmins on each client. In this case, it's “Administrators”. We then simply click “OK” and “Apply” and close all windows. “This group is member of” advices “Restricted Groups” to add our localAdmins group into the “Administrators” group of the clients. The existing group members will not be touched - it simply adds in this case  the TechSupport group to every clients local administrators group.

You experience a long domain logon time in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 after you deploy Group Policy preferences to the computer

“You experience a long domain logon time in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 after you deploy Group Policy preferences to the computer“, http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2561285

There’s a hotfix for Win7 and Server 2008 R2 available.

Modifying the Office 2010 ADMX Templates to allow more trusted locations

This guide will show how to edit your office2010.admn and office2010.adml files to add support for more trusted locations than the default 20 that the admx file currently allows. The below example will show how to add the 21st location. Just repeat the process for more locations. Bolded items need to be changed for each location. You will need to edit the office2010.admx and the office2010.adml file.

in the office2010.admx file search for location20
then insert the below on line 4517
<policy name="L_TrustedLoc21" displayName="$(string.L_TrustedLoc21)" explainText="$(string.L_OfficeTrustedLocationsExplain)" presentation="$(presentation.L_TrustedLoc21)" key="softwarepoliciesmicrosoftoffice14.0commonsecuritytrusted locationsall applicationslocation21">
<parentCategory ref="L_trustcenter241" />
<supportedOn ref="windows:SUPPORTED_WindowsVista" />
<elements>
<text id="L_pathcolon318" valueName="path" expandable="true" />
<text id="L_datecolon319" valueName="date" />
<text id="L_descriptioncolon320" valueName="description" />
<boolean id="L_allowsubfolders321" valueName="allowsubfolders">
<trueValue>
<decimal value="1" />
</trueValue>
<falseValue>
<decimal value="0" />
</falseValue>
</boolean>
</elements>
</policy>

in the office2010.adml
search for <string id="L_TrustedLoc20">Trusted Location #20</string>
add after it  the below for 21
<string id="L_TrustedLoc21">Trusted Location #21</string>

search for  <presentation id="L_TrustedLoc20">
add at the end of it the below for 21

<presentation id="L_TrustedLoc21">
<textBox refId="L_pathcolon318">
<label>Path:</label>
</textBox>
<textBox refId="L_datecolon319">
<label>Date:</label>
</textBox>
<textBox refId="L_descriptioncolon320">
<label>Description:</label>
</textBox>
<checkBox refId="L_allowsubfolders321">Allow sub folders:</checkBox>
</presentation>

Once done making the edits copy the new office2010.admx to C:windowssyvoldomainpoliciespolicy definitions and the new office2010.adml to the C:windowssyvoldomainpoliciespolicy definitionsen-us

When you restart your Group Policy Management Editor you should see the new location

Once the GPO has been applied on a windows client in Office the trusted loactions will show the new 21st location

Customize The User Template on your Mac Leopard and Snow Leopard systems

If you’re like me then you probably strive to provide a consistent user  experience across multiple systems. This helps in facilitating training and minimizing troubleshooting time. I do this on macs by modifying the default account so each new user account created on a system has a standardized environment which is designed for my organizations needs.

At the heart of this practice is a default set of user data, carefully designed around the needs of the group and applied to each account when it’s first created. For Windows that data is typically stored in C:Documents and SettingsDefault User, while Unix systems have traditionally used /etc/skel. Mac OS X keeps its user template deep within the /System hierarchy, but while finding it can be difficult, customizing it to your needs is quite easy.

Start with a new account created specifically for this purpose. Choose the system preferences, dock items, browser bookmarks, server shortcuts, and application settings appropriate to your user base, leaving out anything you can instead control via Open Directory’s managed preferences. If you install individual applications or fonts on a per-user level, include those in ~/Applications and ~/Library/Fonts (where the tilde represents the user’s home directory).

Once you’ve finished, open Keychain Access from the /Applications/Utilities folder and delete the “login” keychain (both references and files when prompted)  so new users will get their own keychain file created for them. You’ll also want to delete the cache files stored in ~/Library/Caches, clear out the “Recent Items” from the Apple menu, and (if you’ve used the Terminal) discard the ~/.bash_history file.

Now log out of the template, and log in to an Admin account. From here, you’ll be clearing Apple’s existing user template and copying your new template user in its place. In Leopard, that work can’t be done using the sudo command, and instead must be performed as the root user, meaning you run the risk of doing serious damage if you don’t understand what you’re typing. If you’re at
peace with that, just open the Terminal, and very carefully type:
su -

After prompting you for a password, this will let you assume the role of root, the Unix “superuser”. This allows you to modify and delete any file on the machine.
rm -r /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/*
This removes everything inside the English-speaking template folder. If you’re utilizing another language, you’ll need to change this to the appropriate template.
cp -R /Users/TEMPLATE/* /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/
In the command above, replace TEMPLATE with the  actual name of the template account you’ve created. This copies your prepared user environment into the template location. After which you can:
exit

Now, when you add a new user account, it’ll be created with your customizations already in place. You can then delete the original account from the install you built it on, but be sure to back up the home directory. The process can be repeated on multiple machines, deployed on your server, or incorporated into a system image, all using the same template.

Batch file to start or stop a service depending on its current state

This batch file will start or stop a service depending on its current state.
Just replace yourservice on line 5 and 16 with the name of the service you want  to stop or start.

 @ECHO OFF  
 REM Checking Service state  
 REM replace yourservice below with the name of the service  
 net start yourservice 2>nul  
 if errorlevel 2 goto AlreadyRunning  
 if errorlevel 1 goto Error  
 REM Service started  
 GOTO ContinueWithBatch  
 :AlreadyRunning  
 REM Service is already running  
 REM replace yourservice below with the name of the service  
 net stop yourservice  
 GOTO ContinueWithBatch  
 :Error  
 REM Service failed to start  
 GOTO ContinueWithBatch  
 :ContinueWithBatch