CROSSREF. We examine networking issues in Chapter 13.

We examine networking issues in Chapter 13.

• File History: The new File History feature works with the Push Button Reset functionality in Windows 8 to create a more flexible way of restoring lost data than the old method, a combination of Previous Files (which no one even knew existed) and Windows Backup (which was ponderous and slow).

• Drive status: Action Center now checks to see whether all of the fixed disks attached to your computer are working properly.

When Action Center detects an issue, it provides notifications via its system tray icon. Clicking these, or the associated warnings that appear in the Action Center control panel, brings you to the user interface you need to mitigate the issue. For example, as part of its overall system performance and reliability tracking, Action Center could eventually warn you to disable app[lication]s to help improve performance. This slightly off‑base recommendation–it really means, “disable startup applications to improve boot‑time performance” and has nothing to do with Metro‑style apps–links to the Task Manager. In Windows 8, the Task Manager now provides a Startup tab that lets you enable and disable applications (but not Metro‑style apps) that are configured to run at boot time. This can be seen in Figure 12‑20.