Windows 7 Walkthrough System and Security Control Panel - Page 6

Windows 7 Walkthrough: System and Security Control Panel. By Greg Shultz // October 17, 2009, 5:32 AM PST. 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. Category View. When you access Windows 7’s Control Panel you’ll see that there are 8 main categories. The System and Security category is the first one in the Control Panel and contains all the tools that you’ll use to perform system, administrative, and security related tasks. Keep in mind that while I am using the Category view, you can display the Control Panel in either large or small icon view, both of which show icons for each of the 45 tools. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. System and Security. When you open the System and Security category you’ll see that there are 8 tools in this category. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Action Center. The Action Center is a new feature in the Windows 7 Control Panel that checks security and maintenance-related items that indicate your computer’s performance. If a problem occurs with a monitored item, such as if the virus database is out of date, a message appears in the Taskbar notification area and the affected item in Action Center displays a color coded message that reflects the severity of the problem along with a recommended action. As you can see there are two expandable sections in the main window: Security and Maintenance. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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). Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Action Center - Maintenance. The Maintenance section contains status information about problems reports, Windows Backup, Windows Update and the Troubleshooting features. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Troubleshooting. From within the Action Center, you can access Windows 7’s new Troubleshooting Platform, which is a comprehensive and extensible tool that is capable of identifying and resolving a wide array of problems. (The Troubleshooting Platform is an extremely detailed tool based on a collection of PowerShell scripts with advanced diagnostics, a wizard interface, and is configurable through Group Policy. As such, I’ll definitely be covering this tool in more detail in future articles.) Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. From within the Action Center, you can access the System Restore feature. Click the Open System Restore button to launch the System Restore wizard. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Change User Account Control Settings. From within the Action Center, you can access the Change User Account Control Settings control and adjust the level at which User Account Control will require administrator-level privileges before changes are made to the system. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. View Performance Information. From within the Action Center, you can access and view Performance Information, which highlights your system’s Window Experience Index rating. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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.) Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Open Disk Cleanup. From within Performance Information, you can launch the Disk Cleanup utility. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Windows Firewall. Back in the System and Security window, you can access the Windows Firewall tool where you can view the status and adjust how the operating system’s built-in firewall works. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Advanced Settings. From within the Windows Firewall tool, you can access Advanced Security settings where you can fine tune the Windows Firewall on a much more granular level. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Device Manager. From within the System window, you can access Device Manager, which allows you to view and control all the hardware attached to the computer. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Remote Settings. From within the System window, you can access the Remote tab of the System Properties dialog box and configure your system’s remote access. The settings on this tab are similar to those in the Remote tab in Windows XP. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. System Protection. From within the System window, you can access the System Protection tab of the System Properties dialog box and configure System Restore. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Windows Update. Back in the System and Security window, you can access the Windows Update tool where you can view the status of the operating system’s updates. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Check for Updates. From within the Windows Update tool, you can manually check for new updates anytime that you want. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Change Settings. From within the Windows Update tool, you can configure when and how you want updates to occur. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Power Options. Back in the System and Security window, you can access the Power Options window, where you can select a predefined power plan, which is a collection of hardware and system settings that manage how your computer uses power. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Backup and Restore. Back in the System and Security window, you can access the Backup and Restore window where you can configure, schedule, and launch a backup operation as well as launch a restore operation. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. 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. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Bitlocker Drive Encryption. Back in the System and Security window, you can access Bitlocker Drive Encryption tool, and encrypt the entire drive. This will block hackers from accessing the system files and discovering your password or from accessing your drive after removing it and installing it in a different computer. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. Administrative Tools. Back in the System and Security window, you can access the Administrative Tools folder, which contains tools for system administrators and advanced users. The tools in the folder might vary depending on which version of Windows you are using. (I’ll cover these tools in more detail in future articles.) Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic. System and Security Walkthrough Map. This tree diagram presents a map of the System and Security walkthrough. Images by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.