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Microsoft

Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

By Greg Shultz October 17, 2009, 4:35 AM PDT

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Windows 7’s Control Panel is literally packed with tools (a.k.a. applets) that allow you to configure and control the way that the operating system works. Because the Control Panel has so many tools, Microsoft added a Search box to make it easy for you to find the tool that you need for a particular task.

To help you become familiar with all of the tools that are available in Windows 7’s Control Panel, I have created the Windows 7 Walkthrough series in which I’ll show you and provide a brief overview of each tool in the Control Panel categories. The first one covers the tools in the System and Security Control Panel category.

Keep in mind that I’ll be using the Ultimate edition of Windows 7, which contains some features not available in other editions of the operating system.

Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

System and Security

System and Security

When you open the System and Security category you’ll see that there are 8 tools in this category.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Action Center - Security

Action Center - Security

The Security section contains status information about the Firewall, Windows Update, Virus protection, Spyware protection, Internet Security Settings, User Account Control, and Network Access Protection (NAP).

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Action Center - Maintenance

Action Center - Maintenance

The Maintenance section contains status information about problems reports, Windows Backup, Windows Update and the Troubleshooting features.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Recovery

Recovery

From within the Action Center, you can access the System Restore feature. Click the Open System Restore button to launch the System Restore wizard.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Advanced Recovery Methods

Advanced Recovery Methods

From within the Recovery window, you can access Advanced Recovery Methods, which allows you to either use a disk image to restore your system or to the reinstall Windows.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Change Action Center Settings

Change Action Center Settings

Back in the Action Center, you can access the Change Action Center Settings and you can turn messages on or off and change how solutions to problems appear.

Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic

Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

View Archived Messages

View Archived Messages

From within the Action Center, you can access the Archived Messages window. If you have used the problem reporting feature to report problems to Microsoft, those messages will appear in the Archive Messages window.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

View Performance Information

View Performance Information

From within the Action Center, you can access and view Performance Information, which highlights your system’s Window Experience Index rating.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Adjust Visual Effects

Adjust Visual Effects

From within Performance Information, you can access the Performance Options dialog box where you can adjust performance by changing a multitude of appearance settings. (You can also adjust processor resources and virtual memory on the Advanced tab and change Data Execution Prevention settings.)

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Adjust Indexing Options

Adjust Indexing Options

From within Performance Information, you can access the Indexing Options dialog box where you can customize the Windows search index to improve the efficiency of searches.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Open Disk Cleanup

Open Disk Cleanup

From within Performance Information, you can launch the Disk Cleanup utility.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Advanced Tools

Advanced Tools

From within Performance Information, you can open Advanced Tools and access a whole slew of utilities too numerous to cover here. While most of these utilities are carryovers from previous versions of Windows, some have new features which I’ll discuss in future articles.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Allow Programs to communicate through the Windows Firewall

Allow Programs to communicate through the Windows Firewall

From within the Windows Firewall tool, you can allow or disallow programs from sending information to or from your computer through the firewall.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Change Notification Settings / Turn Windows Firewall on or off

Change Notification Settings / Turn Windows Firewall on or off

From within the Windows Firewall tool, you can block all incoming connections, change the notification setting or disable the firewall.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Restore Defaults

Restore Defaults

If after you make changes to the Windows Firewall settings you decide against them, you can easily restore all the settings to their default values.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

System

System

Back in the System and Security window, you can access the familiar System window, which is essentially a one stop resource for indentifying your Windows 7 edition, hardware, network, and product ID.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

System Protection

System Protection

From within the System window, you can access the System Protection tab of the System Properties dialog box and configure System Restore.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Advanced System Settings

Advanced System Settings

From within the System window, you can access the Advanced tab of the System Properties dialog box and configure Performance, User Profile and Startup and Recovery settings. The settings on this tab are similar to those in the Advanced tab in Windows XP.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Check for Updates

Check for Updates

From within the Windows Update tool, you can manually check for new updates anytime that you want.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Change Settings

Change Settings

From within the Windows Update tool, you can configure when and how you want updates to occur.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

View Update History

View Update History

From within the Windows Update tool, you can take a look at all the updates that have been installed on your system and you can see when they were installed.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Restore Hidden Updates

Restore Hidden Updates

From within the Windows Update tool, you can restore hidden updates, which are updates you’ve asked Windows not to install or notify you about.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Choose what the power button does / Require a password on wakeup

Choose what the power button does / Require a password on wakeup

From within the Power Options window, you can configure how the power button works as well as specify that a password be required when you wake up your computer.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Create a power plan

Create a power plan

From within the Power Options window, you can define a power plan by choosing options from a collection of hardware and system settings that manage how your computer uses power.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Choose when to turn off the display / Choose when the computer sleeps

Choose when to turn off the display / Choose when the computer sleeps

Rather than configuring an entire plan, you can just choose when to turn off the display and when the computer sleeps.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Advanced Power Settings

Advanced Power Settings

In addition to choosing when to turn off the display and when the computer sleeps, you can access the Advanced Settings dialog box and further customize the current power plan.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Create a system image

Create a system image

From within the Backup and Restore window, you can create a system image, which is an exact copy of a drive.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

Create a system repair disk

Create a system repair disk

From within the Backup and Restore window, you can create a repair disk, which is a bootable CD/DVD that contains the Windows System Recovery Tools.

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Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel

System and Security Walkthrough Map

System and Security Walkthrough Map

This tree diagram presents a map of the System and Security walkthrough.

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By Greg Shultz
My first computer was a Kaypro 16 \"luggable\" running MS-DOS 2.11 which I obtained while studying computer science in 1986. After two years, I discovered that I had a knack for writing documentation and shifted my focus over to technical writing.
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