Windows 8 guide: Using the Action Centre

The Action Center gives you a single place to check for any issues that might be affecting your computer.

With the Start Screen visible, start typing action center, you'll need to spell it the American way, click on Settings and then Action Center.

Read more: Windows 8 video guides

There are two sections to this tool: Security and Maintenance. They only show anything if there are problems detected so hopefully the Action Center will look this this when you look at it.

We'll demonstrate what happens when Windows detects a problem in a bit. Click on one of the titles to see more detail. You can see here in the security tab that it monitors the firewall, windows update, and security software status.

You may also want to check the performance information about your computer. Click on View performance information on the left and then rate this comptuter. The final score is based on the lowest performing part of the computer.

When Windows detects a problem it will alert you in several different ways. To show this we will disable the Windows Firewall.

You can see that as soon as Windows detects that there is no active firewall a message appears above the Notification Area with some information about the exact nature of the problem. You can click on this to fix the problem. In this case it turns the firewall back on without any further action.

If you don't respond to this message, Action Center icon will have a red circle with a white cross on it. Click on the icon to see the problem. you can either click on the message to fix the problem right away or click on Open Action Center.

The problem area will be shown in the action center with options for fixing it or getting more information. We're going to click on the Turn on now button to keep our computer protected.