The Control Panel, Applet by Applet

Icon view is the perfect structure for a chapter that describes each Control Panel applet, since it’s organized in alphabetical order. The rest of this chapter assumes that you’re looking at the Control Panel in one of the two Icon views. (You may see additional applets, depending on the features of your particular computer.)

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: What Happened to AutoRun?

What the heck? I’ve inserted a flash drive that I know contains a software installer, but it doesn’t run automatically like it did in Windows Vista. What’s going on?

Microsoft made a big change back in Windows 7: It turned off the ability for software installers to autorun from USB gadgets like flash drives.

Why? Because the bad guys were using the AutoRun feature as an evil back door for installing viruses and other nasties on your PC. You’d insert a flash drive, and bing!—something would auto-install without your awareness.

Nowadays, if you really want to run an installer from a flash drive, open the Computer window, open the drive’s icon, and run the installer manually by double-clicking it.

Action Center

Here’s the Action Center: a single, consolidated window listing every security- and maintenance-related concern that Windows has at the moment. Be grateful: These all used to be separate balloons harassing you from the right end of the taskbar. For details, see Chapter 21.

Add Features to Windows 8.1

This is the humble successor to what used to be called Anytime Upgrade. It ...

Get Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial