Windows has maintained two overlapping system configuration interfaces — the classic Control Panel and the newer Settings app — for nearly a decade, and understanding why explains a lot about how large, old software products actually evolve.
Why Settings Was Created
Control Panel’s applets were built with older UI technology not designed for touch input, and its organization had accumulated decades of inconsistency. Settings was introduced with Windows 8 as a touch-friendly, modern replacement — but migrating every single Control Panel feature over has been a genuinely slow, multi-year process still not fully complete.
What’s Still Only in Control Panel
Some genuinely advanced options — certain network adapter properties, specific legacy device configuration, some disk management tools — still only exist in Control Panel, because migrating them would mean redesigning genuinely complex interfaces that see relatively little use.
control.exe control.exe /name Microsoft.NetworkAndSharingCenter
This dual-interface situation is a common pattern in long-lived software — a full migration to a new paradigm often stalls indefinitely on the remaining 10-20% of features that are complex enough, or used rarely enough, that finishing the migration never becomes a priority.