The Control Panel subkey in the registry tutorial

The Control Panel subkey in the registry is where many of the Control Panel applets store settings and defaults. The number of sections may vary depending on installed components.Things that affect the number of sections include special mouse support, screen savers, and installed optional components. There may be some differences between a Windows Server and a Windows workstation installation. This subkey also includes data stored in the win.ini and system.ini files on Windows 3.x and earlier.

Accessibility Contains Windows XP's features for users who require special support due to physical limitations—items such as a special keyboard, mouse, or sounds, and general

support.

Appearance Holds settings for Windows XP's appearance and the schemes used for display configuration.

Cache Appears to control how Control Panel applets are cached—don't you just hate it when there is a component that is both undocumented and apparently unused? I checked every system I could,and the Cache subkey was empty on all systems—both XP Professional and Server.

Colors Contains the colors for buttons, text—just about everything displayed to the user.

Current Contains the currently loaded color scheme.

Cursors Contains a value that indicates where the current cursor source is.

Custom Colors Contains any user-defined color schemes.

Desktop Holds the Desktop configuration, colors, spacing metrics—everything about what the screen displays.

don't load Holds the names of any .cpl files that are not to be loaded if found on the system. These .cpl files are usually not loaded as they are incompatible with either Windows XP or another component, or they are not desired.

Input Method Contains information about the user's hotkey definitions.International Contains items dealing with the computer's location (country), including sorting orders.

IOProcs Holds the Media View File System control.

Keyboard Contains configurations for the keyboard, such as initial state of the toggle keys for Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock; and delay and repeat rates.

Microsoft Input Devices Contains information about the interaction between input devices (such as the system mouse) and Windows XP components.

MMCPL Contains Multimedia Control Panel settings.

Mouse Contains mouse settings, such as speed, tracking, and other settings.

Patterns Contains Windows XP's patterns used to create backgrounds, such as Boxes, Critters, Diamonds, and so on.

Powercfg Contains information about the power configuration settings, including definitions of the various power configuration policies.

Screen Saver.3DflyingObj Contains configurations for this screen saver.

Screen Saver.3Dpipes Contains configurations for this screen saver.

Screen Saver.Bezier Contains configurations for this screen saver.

Screen Saver.Marquee Contains configurations for this screen saver.

Screen Saver.Mystify Contains configurations for this screen saver.

Screen Saver.Stars Contains configurations for this screen saver.

Sound Contains information about sounds. Contains one entry for something called SystemDefault or Default. This object was named Sounds in earlier versions of Windows.