Windows 10: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Chapter 15. Maintenance, Speed & Troubleshooting

Your computer requires periodic checkups and preventive maintenance—pretty much like you, its human sidekick. Fortunately, Microsoft has put quite a bit of effort into equipping Windows with special tools, all dedicated to making your system stable and fast. Here’s a guide to keeping your PC and its hard drive humming.

The Action Center

If you’re looking for the best place to go for at-a-glance information about the current state of your PC’s maintenance and Internet security, open the Action Center. To do so, press +A, or click the tiny on your system tray.

Here, all in one place, are all the security and maintenance messages Windows wants you to see. Be grateful; they used to pop up as individual nag balloons on the system tray all day. Now they accumulate here.

You can read the full scoop on the Action Center in “The Action Center”. For now, it’s enough to remember that this is the place to check to see how your Windows Updates, security scans, and PC backups are doing.

Windows Update

Microsoft intends to update your copy of Windows 10 continuously and automatically, over the Internet, as it develops new features and plugs new security holes, through a feature called Windows Update.

You may have noticed the word “automatically” ...