Fix

Customise Or Disable Windows 7’s Action Center

Windows 7’s Action centre does a great job of compressing all of Windows’ update/alert/whatever notifications into one icon, but it takes some tweaking to make it show what you want, or disable it entirely.

At the How-To Geek’s home away from Lifehacker, his partner in serious Windows customisation, Mysticgeek, details the process of defining exactly which kind of system message get displayed through the Action Center’s little white flag icon. It’s all done through the Control Panel and right-click options, no registry hacking required, but the process might not be apparent to Windows 7 newcomers. And for those who don’t want their system to bother them at all, there’s a simple fix for disabling the Action centre for real. Hit the link for a walkthrough full of explanatory screenshots. How To Manage Action centre in Windows 7 [Mysticgeek's Realm]

Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)

  • Rachel Leibowitz

    @Matt Hopton:you know, with the white taskbar icons, the Action Center icon looks more like a white flag of surrender than a system alert..

    I've had a 'check antivirus options' notification for weeks because of something with NOD32, but I honestly don't even notice it anymore.

    I agree, Red Alert would get my attention! lol

  • aaj111

    @Phoshi:

    ACTION TEAM! Assemble!

    aaj111

  • JerryA

    @ComputerCarl: Well, just feel free to notify me when I can run my video editing software natively and properly, use my wireless adapter without some kludgy wrapper, and get my capture decks to work right. Until then, Windows is still the best compromise for me. They don't tell me what brand of hardware I can run their OS on and all of my hardware and software works. To me, that is worth the $99 I paid for an OS which has yet to give me a singly crash or malware infection.

    JerryA

  • Smiling_Gandalf

    @Phoshi: I bet when people have created enough viruses for windows 7 it may well become an action centre

    Smiling_Gandalf

  • ComputerCarl

    @[fedoraproject.org] ;)

    ComputerCarl

  • Phoshi

    @rainbowsky: XP is horribly insecure, let me create your own action center.

    Or help you do it.
    Create a new window. Write in the window:
    "RED ALERT DEFCON 5: USING WINDOWS XP. THIS IS A SECURITY HOLE, IF NOT PATCHED WITH COMMON SENSE COULD MAYBE BE BAD. BUY MS PRODUCTS TO BYPASS COMMON SENSE"
    :P

  • Phoshi

    @Matt Hopton: Rename safe mode to Defcon 5, and the command prompt to the warzone, too!

  • Ben Kreiter

    @Jay Swanson: Yes but there should be a much easier way to tell it that you were the one who turned it off and you don't want it to keep reminding you over and over, just like it does with defender and firewall and..........

    Windows 7 is MUCH better with this. Easy to turn off UAC and other built-in security features and turn off the warnings.

    Ben Kreiter

  • rainbowsky

    Horrible, horrible thought. I'm still using XP! Do I have an Action Center? Or a turn of this or that? Probably a security dilemma.

    rainbowsky

  • Paul Baker

    I vote for: Action Stations! Action Stations! This is not a drill!

    Paul Baker

  • Phillip Loughney

    @Matt Hopton: This, and the system volume needs to be able to go up to 11.

    Phillip Loughney

  • Jay Swanson

    @just_laze: The only reason it yells at you is to make sure it's you doing so and not something else. Be glad for it.

    Jay Swanson

  • Saurabh Prashar

    Action Center along with the entire Windows 7 is really amazing...

    Saurabh Prashar

  • Matt Hopton

    I like the term action centre.. but I vote we ask Microsoft to put in "red alert!" for when your system is infected. Hell, I would purposefully infect myself just to see Windows say that!

    Matt Hopton

  • just_laze

    Action Center is excellent. My only hope is I can disable UAC without being continuously shouted at for doing so.

    just_laze

  • Phoshi

    I still say damn microsoft for making the term "ACTION CENTER" less awesome :(

  • ★_red3001

    @aaj111: you just got <3'ed! XD

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