The icons in my control panel are not showing up at all. Before this,
they showed up but the install/uninstall icon would not work.

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Request for Question Clarification by waldo-ga on 21 Aug 2002 12:43 PDT

What Operating System are you using? i.e. 98, NT, XP, etc.

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Clarification of Question by brenda515-ga on 22 Aug 2002 19:16 PDT

Windows 2000 Pro is my operating system.

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Request for Question Clarification by alienintelligence-ga on 03 Sep 2002 03:21 PDT

Ok... lets not get all crazy here and reinstall
operating systems ;o)

Lets try 3 things first.

-=-=-=-=-=-
#1
First lets do a File Find.
Hit <WindowsKey> and <F>
at the same time to pop up
the search dialog box. (If
that doesn't work for some
reason, find it on the start
button menu. <Start> <search>
<for files or folders>

Do a search for *.cpl These
are some of the files that
make up the Control Panel
View. Do they come up on the
search? Do they appear to 
be in the windows 2k install
directory? Mine are in
c:\WINNT\system32

Some of the particular filenames
you should see are; desk.cpl,
intl.cpl, and joy.cpl. If you
are missing the add/remove icon,
you want appwiz.cpl

You can double click on them, I
suggest you try one of the ones that
I mentioned. If they run then we just 
have a case of missing icons.

-=-=-=-=-=-
#2 
If they are still missing, try a rebuild.

One way to achieve this is with the
Tweak UI program
[ http://download.microsoft.com/download/winme/Install/1.0/WinMe/EN-US/Tweakui.exe
]


There should be a tab that says
'Control Panel' click on it and
see if there are items there. Are
they checked? If so, check back
with the Control Panel window,
make sure they gremlins haven't
released them. There yet?

Tweak UI also has a repair tab.
The first selection is Rebuild
Icons, click on <Repair Now>
Give it a few seconds. Any luck?

-=-=-=-=-=-
#3

I hoped you didn't have to go this
far but here we go.

[ http://www.alienintelligence.com/misc_files/controlpanel.zip ]

All my control panel files. SP3
is applied, not sure if it affects
any of those guys. appwiz.cpl is
the one you want if it's just 
add/remove programs that is bad.
remember to put it where those 
other files were. c:\winnt\system32
same on yours?


good luck,
-AI

Try rebooting your system. Is the CP still blank? 

If so, is this a standalone PC or networked? Operating system? Recent
software and hardware installs/uninstalls?

~omniscientbeing

Windows 2000   -- rebooted several times. The icons now show, but
install.uninstall is blank  PC is networked with one computer  May
have been recent installs/uninstalls

you should check if you are administrator or not. It is possible in
W2K to protect the control panel from unauthorised fiddling. If you
are administrator, check your user rights and stuff.
hope this helps,
cubist

Here is your answer (unfortunately I am not an official researcher, so
this one's on the house ;)

Have a look at the following site which explains how to alter control
panel shortcuts:
http://cssvc.pcworld.compuserve.com/computing/cis/article/0,aid,97440,00.asp

Hope this helps,

Dhimant

I have in the past had a blank add/remove programs dialogue in Windows
2000, and the only fix I could find was re-installing Windows. This
needn't be going as far as formatting your disc or anything like that,
but a simple re-install should replace all of the missing DLLs etc
that might have been corrupted by another program.

Good luck