Master the Windows 7 Action Center

Learn all about the brand new Action Center – it’s your one-stop-shop for all system messages, warnings and updates within Windows 7.

Action Center is a completely new feature in Windows 7, bringing together all the warnings and pop-up messages you see in Windows. Action Center checks many security and maintenance-related items of your computer. When I upgraded my PC to Windows 7, Action Center told me about applications that I needed to upgrade.

When the status of something Action Center is keeping an eye on changes – perhaps your antivirus software has gone out of date – Action Center will let you know. You may see a pop-up appear from its taskbar icon. Also, the status of the item within Action Center changes colour to reflect the severity of the message. Windows 7 will then recommend a course of action.

Step-by-step: Customise the Action Center

1 See the notificationsAction Center appears as a small icon in the notification area on your taskbar. Right-click the icon and you’ll see a pop-up telling you of outstanding issues and any other problems. As you can see I have one issue, though you’ll probably have a couple of issues, especially when you first install or use Windows 7.

2 Defending your PC
Click Open Action Center on the pop-up (you can also right-click the icon or search for it in your Start Menu). As you can see there are three issues displayed on this screen – the extras are that I haven’t set up Windows Backup yet, to save copies of my files, and also Windows Defender hasn’t been updated.

3 Perform the action
Each issue has an action to perform alongside it – I’ve now set Windows Defender to update. This is what the screen looks like when you View message details to see extra information. The Action Center will recommend the best course – here it’s downloading an update from the internet.

4 Set backup
Unless you’ve already configured it, you’re likely to be reminded about running Windows Backup. This is essential, especially if you don’t have any other backup set. Even with Windows 7, computers aren’t infallible, so it’s good to know that your data will be safe. Take heed of the warning!

5 Expand and contractYou can display or hide extra information using the arrows on the top-right of each section. Here you can see what activities are being monitored – my system is set to automatically Check for solutions to problem reports, so it will look online for solutions to any issues my system encounters.

6 Get on top of security
While you’re having a look around Action Center, it’s definitely worth taking some time to check out the contents of the Security section. In here you’ll be able to see exactly what kind of spyware and antivirus protection you currently have on your computer, and if you need to update it. Here you can see that Windows 7 is reporting that both Windows Defender and my thirdparty antivirus application are running smoothly – always good to hear!

7 Change settingsFrom the main Action Center window you can configure settings – click on Change Action Center Settings. Here you can select the items you will get warnings about. You can also fine-tune Windows Update – the system Windows 7 uses to download updates to your system – using the link from here.

8 And that’s it!
Once you’ve sorted out the issues shown in your Action Center, you’ll have a window that looks like this – rather empty. Windows may flag up some issues from time to time though, such as new updates for software and drivers, as well as any issues with your antivirus, backup or internet securit