Display Control Panel is disabled.

Question

When I click on "Change Desktop Icons" in "Personalization", I get an error box named "Display Settings" which says,

"Your system administrator has disabled launching of the Display Control Panel".

I am the administrator, and there is no other account. This is an upgrade, with no othe issues, from Vista Business to Windows 7 Professional. Windows Update supplied the nVidia Quadro NVS 285 driver.

Answer 1

Ramesh,

Mr. Arjun P., a Microsoft engineer of great ability, fixed it from India. He said he may have to create a new admin account, but he must have wanted to fix it without doing that. He did make a new temporary admin account just to see if the problem was there, and it was not, so he knew my admin account was a bit corrupted. He did a lot with Procmon. He must have felt that he just had to get to the bottom of the issue by finding and fixing the exact cause, which he finally did.

Actually, the computer is nicer now, not because I can change the five or six main desktop icons, but because the left click is now standard double click instead of single click (which it was not set for, but was anyway). I didn't realize that improvement was going to happen, but it did.

So, it was a very good tour for me to see what all he did, even though I understand very little of what he did. 

Thanks for your help, Ramesh.

Roy

Answer 2

Ramesh,

I've had one or more of the best Microsoft engineers remotely working on the issue with Easy Assist for a good while today.

I believe they have been to the keys you mentioned. It is fascinating to see. They have installed two or three programs to run

to see what all is going on under the hood.

I told them it isn't a huge deal, I can easily live with the "problem",  but their professional curiosity must be driving them at this point.

Roy

Answer 3

Roy,

Try this:

Click Start, type "Regedit.exe" and press ENTER

Go to the following branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Delete the NoDispCPL value (if present) in the right-pane.

Repeat it here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

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Ramesh Srinivasan, Microsoft MVP [Windows Desktop Experience]

Answer 4

Thanks, Ramesh, but no luck.

I ran the vbs script on the WinHelpOnline Blog page you linked, and I got two messages saying "done". Then I restarted the computer. But, the problem is the same. 

What do you suggest I do now? I appreciate your help.

By the way, on that WinHelpOnline Blog page, the six links to Technet sites about this sort of problem do not work.

Roy

Answer 5

This is caused by a registry-based or GPO setting. Instructions in the following URL to remove the Policy settings (NoDispCpl, NoDispAppearancePage, NoDispBackgroundPage...) should do the trick:

Your system administrator has disabled launching of the Display Settings Control Panel

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Ramesh Srinivasan, Microsoft MVP [Windows Desktop Experience]