My little weasel of an IT admin reinstalled windows XP, and then decided to reconfigure everything so that it would be more “efficient” to his way of thinking. Christ, I’m not even sure what all he did.
However, one thing he did was switch control panel to the “old way.” (I think admins are hotwired to do this, although I’m not sure why.) I want to switch it back to the XP way, but the bugger has made that easy switch option of “switch to classic view” or “switch to new view” not available. I can’t find it and I’m getting irate.
I do know the syphiletic dorkboy used Set Program Access and Defaults but can’t figure out what he did.
If he set up the group policies correctly, there’s nothing you can do. Windows XP is designed so that an administrator can lock down the computer. (I assume you’re on a network, BTW).
If your admin took away the option to switch view, you won’t be able to get it back if you’re in a Windows 2K (or 2K+3) domain with Group Policy. We lock down all sorts of things on employee workstations so they won’t break their computers trying to “make it run better” (or trying to install some game they’re not even supposed to be running).
If you are able to edit the registry, there is a registry key you can set to reenable that option. However, if your admin is even remotely competent you won’t be able to edit that part of the registry.
Sorry. All IT admins are nazis. It’s the only way to keep our sanity and get any real work done.
Try opening a folder up (or going to Control Panel, if that works for you) and going into Folder Options. If you can turn on the Show Common Tasks in Folders (should be the first option on the first tab), then open the Control Panel in a window, one of the options on the new left sidebar should be “Switch to XP View” or something like that.
And FWIW, I like the old view better, and I’m not even an admin (yet). It’s one click fewer (less?), and that means good.