I had to crack open one of my old laptops the other day for the first time in a few years. Still runs okay. Fan is a little loud but not too bad. Problem is my control panel isn't working. I click on it in the start menu and nothing happens. From things I've read online, it is suggested to start Task Manager and end each process and try opening the control panel again. But there are several processes going on at once and I don't want to end one that causes the laptop to not work correctly. The few times I have tried it, I completely disabled the taskbar at the bottom, and also caused my desktop shortcuts to disappear, forcing me to hold down the power button and restart to bring all of it back. Is there any other methods to get the control panel working? It runs Windows 7. I have no idea what service pack it's using, nor do I know if it's 32 or 64 bit.
One methord I can think of is going into Task Manager and closing "Explorer.exe" in the "Processes" tab then in the "Applications" tab click "New Task" then write "Explorer.exe" (Try it lowercase if a capital E doesn't work) then press OK and that should get it all working again (It works for me whenever control Panel decides it doesn't want to work (I'm also using Windows 7)
