In Windows 7 it can get annoying seeing the Action Center icon pop up notifications every time you turn on your computer.  Today we will look at changing the messages that it displays and even completely disabling it. New in Windows 7 is the Action Center which is an activity center that allows you to control system notifications.  This is definitely an improvement to previous versions so you can control the amount of annoying messages the OS pops up from the taskbar.  To get to Action Center select it from Control Panel or simply type "action center" (no quotes) into the search box in the Start Menu. By default the Action Center notification icon will be displayed in the taskbar and display messages about security and maintenance settings.

taskbar

While in Action Center you can view which settings are enabled or not and change them by clicking the different hyperlinks.

settings

Click on Change Action Center settings to turn messages on or off.

onORoff

  If you are an experienced user and don't care to see the Action Center icon in the taskbar at all, here is how we disable it.  Click on Start and go to Control Panel.

StartControlPanel

Now in Control Panel select All Control Panel Items and then click on System Icons.

all items
system

The Turn system icons on or off window will open and here you change Action Center to Off.  Notice you can also turn other system icons on or off as well.

turn off

Also if you click on Customize notification icons in the screen above you can select the behavior of other tray notifications individually.

individual icons

If you are new to computers to Windows 7 you might not want to disable the Action Center entirely until you get a better feel for it.  With these tips you can definitely control the amount of notifications that pop up.