How to Get Control Panel Categories (Groups) on Windows Vista and Windows 7

Question

Is there a way to get a listing of control panel categories on Windows Vista and Windows 7 using the shell?

Is there a way to determine which category an applet is assigned to using conical Names using the shell?

such as Microsoft.Mouse is in which category?

I have some code that works nicely to display control panel applet names obtained from the shell in a TListView in a Vista Classic ungrouped list.

I'd like to try to group the applet names in the TListView similar to Control Panel Classic Grouped by Category in Vista.

Bill

Answer 1

Why not hardcode them? I noticed that custom applets are placed in "Others" or something like that group, so you need to worry only about standard ones.

Answer 2

According to MSDN, you could read the System.ControlPanel.Category value for standalone executables and (on Vista and later) subkeys of the Extended Properties key for DLL items from the registry:

Registering Control Panel Items

Assigning Control Panel Categories