CONTROL.INI [MMCPL] Section Can Make Control Panel Disappear

ID: Q87288

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows versions 3.1, 3.11

SYMPTOMS

If the X= and/or Y= entry in the [MMCPL] section of the CONTROL.INI file is negative, Control Panel may appear to not start, and you receive no error messages.

CAUSE

The X= entry in the CONTROL.INI file is the horizontal window coordinate and the Y= entry is the vertical window coordinate. When these numbers are negative, the Control Panel starting location is off the edge of the screen.

To correct this problem, use a text editor (for example, Notepad), to open the CONTROL.INI file and change any negative numbers to positive numbers.

MORE INFORMATION

If X= and/or Y= entry is a low enough negative number, Control Panel may appear to not start. However, if you open the Task List (press CTRL+ESC or double-click the Desktop), it shows the Control Panel as a running application. If Control Panel is selected and you choose the Switch To button, the application you switch to is the one that was active before you opened the Task List. This happens because the Control Panel is running outside of the screen area.

Page 222 of the "Microsoft Windows Resource Kit" (WRK) guide for Windows 3.1 briefly describes the [MMCPL] section of the CONTROL.INI file as the section that

Specifies values related to the multimedia items in Control Panel

However, it makes no mention of the NumApps=, X=, Y=, W=, and H= entries that do not pertain to the multimedia items in Control Panel.

For more information on the [MMCPL] section of the CONTROL.INI file, query on the following words in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

[MMCPL] and Control

KBCategory: kbmm kbdocerr
KBSubcategory: win31 kbtool

Additional query words: doc err 3.10 3.11

Keywords :
Version : WINDOWS:3.1,3.11
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type :