This is my second Good Boot ‘file away for future reference’ tutorial.

Recently a number of Good Booters asked for assistance restoring their Control Panel’s ‘Display’ applet they claimed vanished after an Adobe Photoshop Elements deletion. Losing their ‘Display’ applet also prevented them from adjusting their ‘Screen Resolution’ via a right click on the Desktop.

Quite frankly I’m not all too sure deleting Photoshop Elements was the cause of their problem but as I have experienced the loss of my Control Panel’s ‘Display’ applet and for that matter other Control Panel applets for a variety of reasons, I thought a quick tutorial on how I regenerated them might be appreciated.

Although this tutorial is appropriate for repairing, restoring and adding most Control Panel applets, for the purpose of this tutorial I’ll use restoring the ‘Display’ applet.

Solution One: Execute a System File Checker.
1. Clicking on Start, All Programs, Accessories.
2. Right-click on ‘Command Prompt’ and click ‘Run as administrator’.
3 If you’re prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password or click ‘Allow’.
4. Type sfc /scannow. Note: there’s a space between ‘c’ and /.
5. Press Enter.

The scan may take a few minutes but all your protected system files will be scanned and corrected if Microsoft discovers an incorrect version.

If this does not solve your problem try Solution Two: A benign, novice friendly adjustment to the ‘Registry’.
1. Create a Systems Restore Point.
2. Click on your Start Orb and type regedit in your Start Search box.
3. Click regedit.exe at the top of the list.
4. Backup your Registry when you arrive at the Registry Edit pane. (Click ‘File’ and ‘Export’. Give the Registry backup file a name and Save it to a My Documents subfolder.)
5. Now go to following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\don’t load
6. This key contains ‘.cpl’ entries in the right-side pane that do not appear in the Control Panel e.g., hdwwiz.cpl, appwiz.cpl, ncpa.cpl, sysdm.cpl, desk.cpl, joy.cpl, firewall.cpl, collab.cpl, irprops.cpl, tabletpc.cpl, bthprops.cpl, infocardcpl.cpl. You can Google the .cpl’s for their definition.
7. Right click on and delete ‘desk.cpl’.
8. Exit Regedit.
9. Click the Control Panel’s ‘View’ and ‘Refresh’ and/or reboot.

The ‘Display’ applet should reappear and be functional.

Note: I suggest you do not delete the whole ‘don't load’ key in Windows 7 as you might get some duplicate items in Control Panel e.g., 2 Keyboards, 2 Mouses, 2 Sound entries. Rather delete only missing or malfunctioning Control Panel applets from the right-side pane.

Here’s wishing you a Good boot.