How to Launch It
- Open the traditional Control Panel through the Start Screen or using the Run Windows command “control”.
- Select “Category” view for Control Panel.
- Select “System and Security” category. This opens a new page containing the subcategories.
- Select “System”. This will launch the applet on the same control panel page.
Main Page
The main page of the applet shows you the following configurations of your system.- CPU description, CPU speed
- RAM size
- 32-bit or 64-bit OS
- Support status of touch input like pen and finger touch
- The Windows version and edition
- The legitimacy of the OS – Microsoft validates the OS through the product key that you got while buying Windows.
- Name of the system
- Network workgroup – the name of the network to which your machine is connected to, if any.
Windows Experience Index
Windows can test the hardware components of your system and calculate a rating on the basis of the scores attained by individual components. To rate your system, click on “Windows Experience Index” link located on the main page of the applet.
The resulting page shows the most recently calculated score of your system. Each component of the system is rated on the scale of 1.0 to 9.9.
The main rating (Windows Experience Index) of the system is equal to the lowest score attained by a component of the system. In my system, the processor is the poorest performer, scoring only 4.9. So the Windows Experience Index of my system is 4.9.
In case you have modified any hardware component(s), you would want to re run the test. Click on “Re-run the assessment” link for that.
Advanced System Settings
The main page of the applet merely provides a peek in your system. It is the advanced settings that contain all the customizations of this applet. In order to invoke advanced settings, click on the “Advanced System Settings” link on the main page of the applet. A small window will launch. The advanced settings are distributed in 5 tabs.Computer Name Tab
You can change the name of your computer in this tab. Also, you can change the workgroup or domain to which your system is connected to.
That can be changed either through a wizard (Click “Network ID” button) or by simply typing in the domain or workgroup name.
Hardware Tab
This tab gives you a button labeled “Device Manager” that launches the Device Manager applet, the one-stop place to manage all the devices connected to your system.
Besides that, you can determine whether or not Windows should automatically find drivers online and install them for new devices. Click “Device Installation Settings” to customize this setting.
Advanced Tab
You can fine tune the performance and appearance of your system in this tab. You can decide what your system should focus more on – visual effects (animation, Aero Peek, shadow effects, etc.) or performance.
Click on “Settings” button located in the “Performance” section of the tab to customize these settings.
You can change the type of user account – local account or roaming account. You can also delete a user account from the system. The “Settings” button of the “User Profiles” section leads you to those settings.
You may have a multi-boot system containing different versions of Windows. In that case, you can specify a default OS that should launch automatically at startup. In case of a system failure, you can specify if Windows should log the event.
Also, you can set Windows to restart automatically in case it fails somewhere critically. Click on “Settings” button of “Startup and Recovery” section to set these options.
Windows maintains several environment variables that are used by both Windows itself and other applications. For example, there is a system variable called “PATH”, which contains address paths to all the crucial system locations like Windows directory, java directory, etc.
This variable is used by Windows and several applications to access system files. The values of such variables can be customized through the “Environment Variables” button.
System Protection Tab
This tab deals with the System Restore feature of Windows. Windows can regularly set restore points for system. In case you have messed up your system, you can revert it to one of these restore points where all things are running well.
This system protection can be applied on each drives separately. You can set system restore on/off for individual drives. Also, you can specify how much space System Restore can occupy for a disk. You can also create a restore point for a drive spontaneously.
Remote Tab
Windows provides a feature called Remote Connection through which, a person containing a user account on a PC can connect to the PC through any other machine. Thus, you can access your machine remotely from another machine through network.
You can turn on or off this feature in this tab. If enabled, you can specify for how much time a remote connection should stay alive. After the time elapses, the connection will be terminated automatically.
You can also decide which user accounts of the system should be allowed to create a remote connection.]]>
