While many people balk and wish Microsoft wouldn’t slowly bury the trusty Control Panel, the Settings app has become an important Windows feature. It’s the launch pad for controlling your system – from adding devices to controlling users and game features. When settings stop working, Windows becomes pretty dysfunctional.
So if your Settings app is crashing or just won’t open, here are a number of fixes that should get it working again.
Re-enable the Settings app in Registry Editor
Who knows why, but your Settings app might be disabled — maybe as a result of a Windows update or a bug, or maybe because you’ve messed around with the registry at some point and done the wrong thing.
To make sure the Settings app isn’t disabled, you can create an entry for it in the registry editor.
From the Start menu, type regedit and open Registry Editor. Access here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Right-click Policies, then click New -> Key and name it Explorer.
Next, right-click an empty space in the right pane, then click “New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value” and name it “NoControlPanel” (without the quotes).
Double-click NoControlPanel and set the value data to “0”.
Update Windows (or undo an update)
The first (and probably easiest) fix is to make sure you’re running the latest version of Windows 10 or 11 with all relevant patches and fixes. Just click Start, type update, click Check for Updates, and check for updates that need to be installed. Restart your PC and see if it works again.
Conversely, if you’ve noticed that your Settings app has stopped working since a Windows update, you might want to undo a Windows update.
First, if you think the Settings app has stopped working, click “Update History” on the Windows Update screen and see if the date of a recent update matches.
If this happens, scroll to the bottom of the update history and then click Uninstall Updates. Locate the update you think is causing problems, right-click it and click Uninstall.
Restart your PC. If the problem is solved, great! Otherwise, you can simply reinstall this update as if you were installing a Windows update.
A simple solution
Sometimes the best solutions are the ones that seem too simple to be true. But this is often the case in technology. Here is a simple solution:
Reset settings, job done (hopefully).
Other ways to open Settings
If you’re just looking for a quick workaround for a misbehaving Settings app, your best bet is to try opening it another way.
One method is to press Win + I to try to open the Settings app.
Alternatively, you can use system tray icons, although the method varies somewhat depending on the Windows version.
On Windows 11, click in the lower right corner of the taskbar and then click the Settings cog.
On Windows 10, click the Action Center icon in the taskbar (the bubble at the bottom right), then click All Settings.
If these methods don’t work, or your Settings app is still not accessible from your Start menu in the normal way, it’s time to try something more complex…
Reinstall and re-register Windows applications
Windows Settings app is one of the official built-in Windows apps. Therefore, reinstalling (along with all other Windows applications) should resolve any problems you might encounter.
To do this, open PowerShell (simply type “powershell” in the Start menu “Search”, then right-click on it and “Run as administrator”) and enter the following command:
Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
This will reregister and reinstall all Windows apps, hopefully bringing the Settings app (and others) fully functional again.
Also read:
What does System Restore do in Windows?
Run an SFC scan
Before attempting the more involved method of repairing the Settings app, here are some quick fixes that may suffice:
- Scan your hard drive for errors – go to the start menu, type cmd, open command prompt, then type sfc /scannow
- Otherwise, you should try downloading the Windows Update Troubleshooter and see if that helps.
Create a new Windows user
If you still can’t open the Settings app, it’s time to take the more drastic solution of creating a new administrator account and moving your files there. Since you can’t use the Settings app to create a new account, you can use the Microsoft Common Console document instead if you’re using Windows 10 or Windows 11 Pro.
If you have Windows Home Edition, you’ll need to create a new user from the command prompt instead.
Click the Start menu, type cmd, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
At the command prompt, type the following command but with the username and password you want to create for the new administrator account:
net user newusername newpassword /add
You should see the message “The order was successfully completed” to let you know that the account has been created.
The new user is now the administrator.
The next step is to transfer your files from your old Windows account to your new one.
In File Explorer, go to the system disk (where Windows is installed), in the top tab click View -> View -> then check the Hidden Items option (in Windows 10, after clicking Show). , simply activate the “Hidden elements” check box).
In File Explorer, navigate to your old user account (by default C:/Users/old account name) and double click on it. You will see the following prompt.
Click Next, enter your account password when prompted, then copy all files from that account and paste them into your new one (at C:/Users/newusername by default).
You will see a message asking if you want to merge folders from your old account to your new one. Click Yes.
Uninstall conflicting apps
Believe it or not, some apps are known for Windows Settings app not working. One of these apps is the Lenovo Onekey Theater app. This application aims to simplify the audiovisual experience on Lenovo devices.
However, it seems that this has caused problems for some users and their settings app just won’t work. Unfortunately, there may be other apps of this type out there, so you should do some research to see if one of your recently installed apps was causing a problem.
Also read:
Photos app not working on Windows 10? Here are the fixes
The Settings app is very important in Windows and if it doesn’t work, it can hamper your work and productivity. Use the above methods to fix the problem. However, if you find that nothing works, you can reset Windows or do a fresh install. Your problem is Windows won’t start, here is the solution.
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