Windows Action Center Not Working – How To Get It Fixed?

The action center on Windows 10 is the notification hub. It displays all the notifications for the apps and settings installed on your device in real-time. You can access the notifications and some quick settings toggle by clicking the messaging icon at the bottom right of the taskbar.

However, sometimes clicking on the action center does nothing. You can face these errors:

• Hovering on the action center shows the previews of the notifications, but clicking on it does nothing
• Action Center won’t open when clicking on the icon
• Action center shows the same notifications even after Clicking ‘Clear all’.

If you suffer from these issues as well, your action center is broken and not working. Here I will discuss how to solve ‘Action center not working’ error.

FIXED: Action Center Not Working

If you face the above-mentioned symptoms, here are the steps you can follow to solve the error.

# Solution 1: Restart

You may think this is silly, but restarting your device will shut down all misbehaving services and may help you solve the ‘Windows 10 notifications not working’ error you are facing. Sometimes the silly solutions may be enough for you.

# Solution 2: Restart File Explorer

If a simple restart did not solve your error and action center will not open, you can try restarting the File Explorer. The action center is part of the file explorer, and there may be some problem with the file explorer that is causing the error.

Open the task manager using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys. Locate Windows Explorer under processes and right-click on it to select Restart.

See if this solves your issue.

# Solution 3: Turn Off Transparency Effects

It may be because of a graphics error that you may be facing this error. Turning off the transparency effects may also help in solving the action center misbehaving error.

To turn off transparency effects, follow these steps:

• Right-click on any empty space on the desktop and select Properties.
• From the left pane, select Colors.
• From the right pane, scroll down to “More options”.
• Turn the toggle towards off under “Transparency effects”.
• Uncheck the boxes next to ‘Start, taskbar and action center’ and ‘Title bars’.

• Close the Settings app and restart your system.

If the graphics were straining your system too much, that may have been the reason your Action center was not working. It should be solved now.

# Solution 4: Rename UsrClass.dat File

If any of the above three methods did not help you, you may have to work a little harder to solve the error.

The User profile information is stored under the UsrClass.dat file. If the data in this file gets corrupted for some reason, it is possible that the action center also got broken because of that.

Changing the name of this file will rebuild the data file and should solve the error.

In Windows 10, follow these steps:

1. Open a Run dialog by pressing Win + R.
2. Type the following and press Enter to go to the directory:
   %localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows

3. By default, the UsrClass.dat file is hidden. To view hidden files, click on the View tab, and select the checkbox next to Hidden items under Show/hide section.
4. Once the file is visible, rename the file to something else like “old.dat” or “UsrClass.dat.bak”

5. A warning message will pop up asking if you are surely changing it. Press Yes.
6. Sometimes the file may be in use, so it cant be changed. In that case, you need to create– or use if already present- another account on your system and delete the file from the new account
7. In your new account, navigate to the following path, and repeat the steps to view hidden files:
      C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows

Note: Replace <username> with the old account username

8. Try renaming the file again.
9. Restart your system.

Since the file is no longer in use by the original user, you should be able to rename the file without any difficulty. Renaming the file will make Windows re-register the user profile, which in turn should help you solve your problem.

# Solution 5: Re-Register Action Center Using PowerShell

If renaming the file did not work for you, you can try re-registering the Action Center.

First launch PowerShell by pressing Win + X to launch the WinX menu, and select PowerShell (Admin) from it.

Alternatively, type PowerShell in search and select Run as Admin from the right-click context menu.

Copy the following command and press Enter to execute it:

Get-AppxPackage | % { Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppxManifest.xml" -verbose }

Let the installation complete. It may take some time to finish, don’t panic and cancel it.

Restart your system.

Following this, the action center should work normally.

Conclusion

The action center is one of the few things in Windows that are not very talked-about but is a very important feature as it cancels out the need to search individually searching for all the notifications and changes made to your settings.

If it gets broken, you can miss out on some very important notifications. Now you know how to solve the ‘Action center not working’ error using the five fixes given above. Tell us in the comments which solution helped you, and discuss further the same.