control panel missing, limited access to programs

would appreciate any help or ideas on this one. i can only access my programs (other than ie6 and my computer) through safe mode. have lost control panel icon. does anyone know a back door into it, so that i can make a boot disk for my zip drive? i can access the registry, and all other programs once i am in safe mode, but i can not access the net.
i know i'm going to have to format and reinstall 98 very soon, but i don't have a working floppy drive, so i need to find a way into the system.
can i just copy the start up files onto a zip disk to get it to boot the computer once i have cleared the system?
any help or ideas are greatly needed here, as i'm running out. thanks.

 

Look in your windows\system folder for any files that have a .cpl extension. Any file with a .cpl extension is one that you see in the control panel. If things work the way they should, you should be able to double click on them and they should open just as if you opened them in the control panel. You can figure out what some of them by the name. If you can't, it doesn't matter. There's no harm done opening them to find out what they are. You'll have to have extensions showing to find them though. If you don't, in windows explorer click view>folder options>view and uncheck the line that says hide file extensions for known types.

Another thing you can try is a tweak I used to use all the time on 98. Right click on your start menu and choose open. In the window that opens right click on a blank spot and choose new>folder. Then for the name, copy and paste in the following line.

Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

If your control panel is just somehow hidden and not all together broke, this should put a folder in your start menu that when you point your cursor at it, a cascading menu will appear with all the contents of the control panel in it.

Have you scanned the drive for viruses, spyware, etc. ?

 

Pick your flavor.............

Type on tthe runline control.exe
=================
Startmenu button>settings>control panel
=================
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=36192&highlight=cpl
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http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=28220&highlight=control+panel
==================
This references xp but most still apply to win98
http://www.vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/control.htm
==================

What happened that has made you use safemode? Perhaps you can be helped in other ways. We need some history specifics here.

 

Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

A little off topic, so please excuse me.

It pertains to

Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

I love it since I don't have to open up a window to get to a any particular setting, and it was working all well and good when I upgraded my win98se to XP pro...then i upgraded mobo's w/o deleting everything under system devices... so to make a long story short, I ended up having do a fresh install of XP.

anyway my problem now is that when I use

Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

Now in XP, whenever I name the folder that, I get EXACTLY that. It makes my start menu awful long.

Is there anyway to only display "Control Panel "
i thought renaming would work, but when I delete the "{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}" portion, the entries become greyed out, and loses all functionality.

I assume there has to be a workaround since it displayed properly before.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

You don't need the shortcut for this in XP. Right click on the taskbar>properties. If you use the new style start menu click the customize button next to the line that says start menu and then click the advanced tab. In the start menu items box, under control panel tick the line that says "display as menu ".

If you use the classic menu right click on the taskbar>properties and click the customize button next to where it says classic start menu. Put a check mark in the box next to "expand control panel ".

Either of these will get you what you want but for the classic menu it won't be in the main menu. You'll have to use start>settings>control panel to get at it.