Yeah, yeah, yeah...sure you can just create a shortcut to your Control Panel and through it in your Quick Launch, but that is the easy way out, and you don't get as much functionality as you will with this cool tip I found.

First, Launch Explorer or My Computer and navigate to the folder that holds your Quick Launch settings (typically C:\Documents and Settings\user-name\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch) and right click on the background. From the menu select New->Folder, and name the new folder exactly:

Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}

This will create a Control Panel shortcut that uses the correct folder icon (though you may have to refresh the icon or even restart to get it to display correctly the first time), as well as another nifty feature...

Not only will it have the correct Tooltip (the little dialog popup when you mouseover the icon), but if you resize the Quick Launch so that the Control Panel Icon is not shown directly (when that happens it will show a couple icons, and a >> link to display the rest of the icons), the Control Panel icon will become a menu, from which you can access all the control panel applets directly from the quicklaunch. Neat, huh?

Enjoy this tip.