Geek and a Half

August 2nd, 2007 by Jake

Since I switched to Vista, one of the most annoying things for me was trying to figure out how to get to the Network Connections window. From the desktop, it takes 4 clicks to get there, plus you get another window open you didn’t want. If you want to restore the original link and have the “Network Connections” icon back in your Control Panel, just do this:

Open the registry editor.
Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\don’t load\
Delete ncpa.cpl
Open your Control Panel to find your beloved Network Connections link back again.

If you’re even more lazy, and you don’t want to open the control panel, make a new shortcut that points to either ncpa.cpl or control.exe netconnections.