Control Panel Will Not Open

Right click on a blank area on the task bar at the bottom of the Desktop -> Left click on Properties -> Left click on the Start Menu tab -> Left click on the Customize button -> Left click on the Advance tab -> In the Start menu items make the apropriate selections.

Hope this helps. If not, be sure to post back so folks will know you still need help with it.

Did you ever get an answer or fix for this? My computer is doing the exact same thing.

have u tried it in safe mode ????/
im sure it will open in safe mode
so if it opens then
start->run->msconfig->service tabs>put check mark on hide all microsoft services(it will be jst above ok button)->disable all and click on startup tab and click on disable all and then click ok and restart the computer

if still nothing opens then open Internet explorer and click tools got internet options and goto advanced tab and under browsing "uncheck" enable third party browser extensions and restart

if still does not work give a shot to spyware scan in safe mode and also check if you have popup blocker


thats it let me know the results and i ll see what else can be done
thanks

Some spyware disables the control panel and msconfig and more.

What are you doing about spyware?

Bob

I'm having the exact same issue, and I'm not making any improvement so far. If I try to open Control Panel or IE, I see it open for a second, then the screen goes blank (background image viewable) then all my desktop icons return.

I'm using Spybot - Search & Destroy (up to date) & SypwareBlaster (up to date) for all my spyware concerns... and I have Avast Antivirus running (up to date)

If I run in safemode (w/ network), all acts normally, I have no limitations. I re-ran both my spyware apps in the mode to double check things, and I even used Spybot to lock my web page to yahoo.com, but when I reboot in normal mode, I can see during that 1 second that IE opens that my webpage has been changed to lookfor.cc

I'm running out of ideas here...

Any suggestions?

I have been having the same problem on my Windows XP Pro. I was able to get to Control Panel in safe mode, but not otherwise. I tried disabling all my startup apps with MSCONFIG, ran every Spyware and Malware app I could find, ran Hijack this, looked at all sorts of frums, and even re-installed XP SP2 all to no avail.

I was finally able to resolve it by going into c:\windows\system32 and deleting all the .cpl files (control panel extensions). Windows automatically put them back after I deleted them except for a few that were added by installed applications (Quicktime, etc), and I suspect that it was one of them that was causing the problem because now everything works.

You should probably make a backup of these files to a temp folder before deleting them just in case you have a problem with Windows not installing them automatically.

I hope this helps everyone else suffering from this affliction.