The Action Center is the central location for all important Windows messages. It was developed through feedback from Windows XP users who felt that their software and Windows itself was pestering them too often with pop-up information balloons.

You access the Action Center by clicking the white flag logo (the irony of which has never been lost on me) on the far right of the Windows 8 Taskbar (see Figure 3). If there are any messages pending, a pop-up window will appear first, which includes an Open Action Center link.

Figure 3. The Action Center Notifications pop-up window on the Windows 8 Desktop

So, rather than pop-up annoying messages on screen, if there are messages waiting for you in the Action Center, the white flag will appear with a red circle and a white cross. It is a small but eye-catching alert.

It is easy to control what messages and alerts for which the Action Center will prompts you; for example, you can turn off all backup messages if you use third-party backup software.

Some third-party software, especially antivirus packages, will automatically plug themselves into the Action Center, and you can monitor them from there.

All messages in the Action Center display a colored band to their left (see Figure 4) that denotes the message’s priority; green indicates that all is well, yellow messages signify that information is available, and red ones designate that something needs your attention.

Figure 4. The Action Center in Windows 8

When something fails with Windows 8, such as when a program or a driver crashes, the operating system stores information about these errors in a log and displays the log in Action Center. If there are any error logs in Action Center, you will see a Check For Solutions option under Maintenance. Click this option to search for a matching error log, hopefully, there’s a solution in Microsoft’s database. You can also use the Maintenance section to change the Settings And Troubleshooting Settings. It’s possible that in a corporate environment the IT department will turn off these settings, perhaps to conserve Internet bandwidth or because of its own update management policy.

One new feature in the Action Center is the Automatic Maintenance tool (see Figure 5), which pools checking for and installation of software updates, security scans, and system diagnostics into one action that is performed on a daily schedule.

You can even configure Automatic Maintenance to temporarily wake a computer from sleep to perform the tasks (only if it’s plugged into an electric supply).

Figure 5. Configuring Automatic Maintenance in Windows 8

As a way of helping keep Windows 8 happy and healthy, this is an excellent idea, and performing all the tasks simultaneously also helps reduce battery drain when you are using a laptop or tablet computer.

To control what messages appear in the Action Center, in the colored panel on the left of the Action Center panel, click Change Action Center Settings. In the window that appears, indicate the items for which you want Windows to notify you when there are problems, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Changing the Action Center Settings

The Action Center should be your first resource when diagnosing problems within Windows 8. This is because it is not only the central place for diagnostic and maintenance messages from the operating system, it is also a centralized place from which you can control essential Windows 8 features such as the User Account Control security system and Network Access Protection.

You can also view archived Action Center messages from the main Action Center panel. Problems that have occurred with Windows 8 in the past can give you clues to a solution for a current problem.

In the Action Center, you can also view the operating system’s reliability history. To do this, go to the Maintenance section (see Figure 7) and click View Reliability History. As I said earlier, Windows 8 tracks problems caused by software, drivers, and Windows components. It represents this information in a chart.

Figure 7. In the Maintenance Section, you can click a link to view the operating system’s reliability history