How to speed up Windows 10

If you think that the Win­dows 10 oper­at­ing sys­tem on your com­put­er is too slow, then it’s time to do some­thing about it. There are many ways to speed up per­for­mance, which we will talk about.

Clean­ing the “Start­up” sec­tion

The speed of the OS is affect­ed by how many third-par­ty pro­grams are cur­rent­ly run­ning. Many users almost nev­er con­fig­ure the installed appli­ca­tions, as a result of which they often begin to load when the com­put­er starts. This lit­er­al­ly par­a­lyzes the PC in the first one and a half to two min­utes of its oper­a­tion after turn­ing it on. And then it can work notice­ably slow­er than it should.

You can find out which pro­grams are loaded with the oper­at­ing sys­tem in the “Start­up” sec­tion. Some appli­ca­tions should be removed from it. For exam­ple, a tor­rent client is best launched by dou­ble-click­ing on its icon. You should not force pro­grams cre­at­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er of the scan­ner, print­er and MFP to work con­stant­ly. Espe­cial­ly if the com­put­er is not installed some­where in the office. And even the cloud stor­age client can be launched only as need­ed, although you can still think about this.

It is pos­si­ble that in the “Start­up” there are also pro­grams unknown to you that were installed many years ago. If you do not use them, then feel free to delete them from this sec­tion!

To get into this sec­tion of the oper­at­ing sys­tem, you need to per­form the fol­low­ing steps:

1. Open Win­dows 10 Set­tings by doing this either through the Start menu or by press­ing the Win+I key­board short­cut.

2. Fol­low the path “Appli­ca­tions” — “Start­up”.

Here, deac­ti­vate the check­box­es for those pro­grams whose back­ground work you do not need. This will imme­di­ate­ly free up some amount of RAM, and also reduce the load on the proces­sor. As a result, the Win­dows 10 oper­at­ing sys­tem will run faster.

Disabling the tracking function

At one time, the new oper­at­ing sys­tem from Microsoft was neg­a­tive­ly received by users due to the fact that it lit­er­al­ly spied on the own­er of the com­put­er. Indeed, the OS has an active­ly work­ing track­ing func­tion. On weak machines, it caus­es seri­ous slow­downs. That is why many pre­fer to turn it off. This is usu­al­ly done at the stage of installing Win­dows 10. But if it is already installed, then you can dis­able track­ing as fol­lows:

1. Press the key com­bi­na­tion Win + I or click on the noti­fi­ca­tion icon, and then on the “All set­tings” item.

2. Go to the “Pri­va­cy” sec­tion.

3. In the “Gen­er­al” sub­sec­tion, you can safe­ly dis­able all options, except for the sec­ond (“SmartScreen Fil­ter”). Do not be alarmed if you do not have this item — it is not avail­able in some ver­sions of the OS.

4. In the “Loca­tion” sub­sec­tion, you can turn off the loca­tion of the com­put­er. Or acti­vate it only for some spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions.

5. In the “Speech, hand­writ­ing, and typ­ing” sub­sec­tion, we rec­om­mend that you click the “Stop learn­ing” but­ton, if avail­able. This will stop track­ing exact­ly what char­ac­ters you type, pro­nounce or write.

6. In the “Cam­era” and “Micro­phone” sub­sec­tions, deac­ti­vate the cor­re­spond­ing switch­es. Or leave these com­put­er mod­ules avail­able only to cer­tain appli­ca­tions — for exam­ple, Skype.

7. In the fol­low­ing sub­sec­tions, you can also pre­vent pro­grams from get­ting one or anoth­er access. Well, in the “Reviews and Diag­nos­tics” sub­sec­tion, pro­hib­it Win­dows from ask­ing for your feed­back (select the “Nev­er” option). Well, in the item “Send­ing device data to Microsoft” select “Basic infor­ma­tion”.

And these are just the main sub­sec­tions of the set­tings where you can find track­ing func­tions! It is not sur­pris­ing that spe­cial pro­grams began to appear quite quick­ly, which allow you to almost instant­ly turn off all track­ing of user actions. For exam­ple, we rec­om­mend down­load­ing
Destroy Win­dows 10 Spy­ing. Its inter­face is made in Euro­pean, and all OS func­tions that can be dis­abled have a detailed descrip­tion. Be sure to read all the points — some of them are bet­ter left in work­ing order.

Eliminate interface lag

Some­times you may encounter the fact that it is not the oper­at­ing sys­tem itself that slows down, but only its inter­face. At the same time, such a prob­lem appeared for some users not imme­di­ate­ly, but after the next update. It is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the Con­trol Flow Guard fea­ture enabled by default, which is designed to pro­tect against exploits that exploit mem­o­ry access vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.

Dis­abling CFG should lead to an increase in the smooth­ness of the inter­face. But by doing so, you slight­ly reduce secu­ri­ty. There is noth­ing to wor­ry about, espe­cial­ly if you have a good antivirus installed.

To dis­able the above tech­nol­o­gy, go to “Set­tings”, then go to “Updates and Secu­ri­ty”. Here you should click on the item “Win­dows Defend­er”.

In the win­dow that appears, open the “Appli­ca­tion and brows­er con­trol” sec­tion.

Scroll through the list of pos­si­ble options. At the bot­tom of it, you will find the Exploit Pro­tec­tion sec­tion. Here, click on the “Exploit pro­tec­tion set­tings” link but­ton.

You will imme­di­ate­ly see the Con­trol Flow Guard (CFG) field. Here you need to select the item “Off. default”.

That’s all. It remains only to con­firm the change of para­me­ters. Well, to be sure, you can restart your com­put­er.

Eliminate Malicious Applications

It is pos­si­ble that Tro­jans, virus­es and oth­er mali­cious soft­ware have set­tled on your com­put­er. Usu­al­ly they do not affect the per­for­mance of the com­put­er, but this is not always the case. That is why we rec­om­mend access­ing the Inter­net only with an antivirus installed!

If for some rea­son you are unable to install a full-fledged antivirus, then we sug­gest that you reg­u­lar­ly use online ser­vices to check your com­put­er for virus­es. They do not require instal­la­tion, but at the same time they per­fect­ly cope with their main task.

Driver update

Almost every com­put­er com­po­nent works with the help of a dri­ver — a spe­cial pro­gram code, thanks to which the device is deter­mined by the sys­tem. If you reg­u­lar­ly update the OS, then you need to do this with the dri­vers, oth­er­wise they risk becom­ing out­dat­ed.

Basi­cal­ly, it is rec­om­mend­ed to update the video card dri­ver. This is required not only for the sta­ble launch of games, but also for ade­quate ren­der­ing of the oper­at­ing sys­tem inter­face.

Win­dows 10 can auto­mat­i­cal­ly update all dri­vers. But some­times this fea­ture does­n’t work. To check if the dri­ver is up to date, go to Device Man­ag­er. Here, select, for exam­ple, a graph­ics adapter, then right-click on it and click on the “Prop­er­ties” but­ton. In the win­dow that opens, go to the “Dri­ver” tab. Here you can click on the “Update” but­ton. If a new ver­sion of the dri­ver exists, then it will be down­loaded and installed.

Killing background processes

The work of the com­put­er involves the work of a huge num­ber of back­ground process­es. Some of them are relat­ed to the OS itself, oth­ers are relat­ed to the pro­grams you installed. If you urgent­ly need to speed up the per­for­mance of Win­dows 10, you can “kill” some process­es. But remem­ber that after a reboot, every­thing will most like­ly return to nor­mal.

To see the cur­rent back­ground process­es, you need to go to “Task Man­ag­er”. To launch it, right-click on the Start but­ton and select Task Man­ag­er. If the menu is dis­played in a com­pact form, click on the “Details” but­ton locat­ed at the bot­tom left.

In the win­dow that opens, go to the “Details” tab. You can now sort all process­es by CPU by click­ing on the cor­re­spond­ing col­umn head­ing. Thus, you can imme­di­ate­ly see which process­es are tak­ing the most CPU time. Also pay atten­tion to those that con­sume a large amount of RAM (espe­cial­ly if 8 GB or even less is built into the com­put­er).

Nev­er get rid of the Sys­tem Idle process. Despite its name, it is very impor­tant. Killing him will at least restart the oper­at­ing sys­tem.

To find out exact­ly what this or that process does, type its name into any search engine. If it turns out that the process is not par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant, you can safe­ly get rid of it.

Eliminate Apps from the Start Menu

Win­dows 10 dif­fers from old­er oper­at­ing sys­tems by hav­ing live tiles. They are locat­ed in the Start menu, serv­ing not only to launch the cor­re­spond­ing pro­grams, but also to dis­play any infor­ma­tion. Need­less to say, such a replace­ment for tra­di­tion­al icons neg­a­tive­ly affects sys­tem per­for­mance? Some peo­ple don’t even use Live Tiles!

If you, too, almost nev­er look at all these tiles, we rec­om­mend that you at least remove them from the Start menu. To do this, right-click on the tile, and then select “Unpin from Start Screen”. If it hap­pens on a rel­a­tive­ly weak lap­top, then this will cer­tain­ly lead to an increase in per­for­mance.

If you want to dis­able absolute­ly all live tiles, then for this you should go to the “Local Group Pol­i­cy Edi­tor”. Here you need to go along the path “User Con­fig­u­ra­tion” — “Admin­is­tra­tive Tem­plates” — “Start Menu and Taskbar”. Here you need to dou­ble-click on the item “Turn off tile noti­fi­ca­tions.”

Some built-in appli­ca­tions in Win­dows 10 could be removed alto­geth­er, fur­ther reduc­ing the load on the proces­sor. How­ev­er, this is already a top­ic for a sep­a­rate dis­cus­sion, since this oper­a­tion is by no means car­ried out in two clicks.

Increasing the paging file

If the com­put­er does not have enough RAM, then from time to time it may try to increase it at the expense of the hard dri­ve. The amount of per­ma­nent mem­o­ry reserved for this task is called the pag­ing file. By default, it can be very tiny or com­plete­ly absent, which is why when there is a short­age of RAM, ter­ri­ble brakes begin.

To change the size of the pag­ing file, the fol­low­ing steps are required:

1. Go to “This PC” — “Prop­er­ties”.

2. Click the “Advanced sys­tem set­tings” but­ton.

3. In the win­dow that opens, go to the “Advanced” tab. Here again, click the “Options” but­ton, locat­ed in the “Per­for­mance” sec­tion.

4. This time you should be inter­est­ed in the “Advanced” tab. Here you will see the cur­rent amount of vir­tu­al mem­o­ry. If you don’t like it, click the Change but­ton.

5. In the win­dow that opens, we rec­om­mend that you uncheck the box “Auto­mat­i­cal­ly choose the size of the pag­ing file.” Instead, choose the dri­ve that will con­tain this file your­self, and then spec­i­fy the ini­tial and max­i­mum size. Usu­al­ly 4–5 GB is enough.

6. Click the “OK” but­ton.

Note that this step is not required if your com­put­er has at least 16 GB of RAM built into it. Prac­tice shows that in this case the pag­ing file is almost nev­er used, only tak­ing up space on the dri­ve. It should also be under­stood that work­ing with a hard dri­ve is very slow. It would be bet­ter if the swap file is locat­ed on the SSD.

Simplifying graphic effects

If you have a bud­get lap­top, then it is pos­si­ble that in order to increase per­for­mance, you will have to get rid of improved graph­ic effects. To do this, right-click on the “Start” menu, then select “Sys­tem” and “Advanced sys­tem set­tings”.

In the win­dow that opens, go to the “Advanced” tab. Here you will see the “Per­for­mance” sec­tion. It con­tains the “Options” but­ton, which you should click.

You will be tak­en to a new win­dow. Here it is rec­om­mend­ed to check the item “Ensure the best per­for­mance”. The sys­tem will imme­di­ate­ly turn off all ani­ma­tions and effects. At the same time, you can still leave some of them by check­ing the box­es next to the cor­re­spond­ing items.

The set­up does­n’t end there. Now you need to return to the main screen of the oper­at­ing sys­tem. Press the key­board short­cut Win+I. In the win­dow that opens, go to the “Acces­si­bil­i­ty” sec­tion, and then go to “Oth­er options”. Here you need to dis­able the item “Play ani­ma­tion in Win­dows”.

To fur­ther improve per­for­mance, vis­it anoth­er sec­tion in the “Para­me­ters”. It’s about per­son­al­iza­tion. There is a Col­ors sub­sec­tion where you can turn off trans­paren­cy for the taskbar, start menu, and noti­fi­ca­tion bar.

On very weak machines, it may also be nec­es­sary to turn off the sounds announc­ing cer­tain events. To do this, right-click on the “Start” menu, then select “Con­trol Pan­el” and “Sound”. In the win­dow that appears, go to the “Sounds” tab. Here, turn on the “Mute” sound scheme. As a result, the oper­at­ing sys­tem will stop access­ing the hard disk in the event of any event, repro­duc­ing the cor­re­spond­ing sig­nal.

Checking the operating system for errors

If the slow­downs start­ed unex­pect­ed­ly for you, then it is pos­si­ble that as a result of the next update or instal­la­tion of any pro­gram, the Win­dows 10 oper­at­ing sys­tem was dam­aged. There­fore, we rec­om­mend check­ing it for errors.

1. First of all, click on the “This PC” but­ton locat­ed in the “Start” menu.

2. Right-click on “Win­dows Disk”.

3. Select “Prop­er­ties” and “Tools”.

4. Click the “Check” but­ton.

That’s it, the oper­at­ing sys­tem will run a self-test. You can access this tool a lit­tle faster using the com­mand line, in which you need to enter the sfc /scannow com­mand — this will lead to the same result.

If there are no errors, then the brakes are to blame, with a high degree of prob­a­bil­i­ty, not the oper­at­ing sys­tem itself.

Turn off cloud sync

Microsoft has been devel­op­ing its OneDrive cloud stor­age for a long time. Pre­vi­ous­ly, to use it, you had to down­load a sep­a­rate pro­gram. Now work with it is car­ried out using the tools built into Win­dows 10. And it is bet­ter to dis­able them if you are not going to use this ser­vice.

To turn off sync­ing with OneDrive, go to This PC. Here you need to right-click on the “OneDrive” item. Next, click on the item “Select the stor­age fold­ers to syn­chro­nize.”

In the win­dow that opens, you just need to uncheck the box “Sync all files and fold­ers to OneDrive”. After that, it remains only to click the “OK” but­ton. From now on, the oper­at­ing sys­tem will not con­tact its servers after every major change in the file sys­tem.

Computer upgrade

Of course, the eas­i­est way to speed up your com­put­er is to upgrade it. Espe­cial­ly if you use a desk­top PC — here you can also replace the moth­er­board by choos­ing one that sup­ports a new type of RAM and install a new proces­sor. But most lap­tops can be upgrad­ed a bit. More specif­i­cal­ly, the fol­low­ing com­po­nents can speed up Win­dows 10:

RAM — espe­cial­ly if its obvi­ous­ly insuf­fi­cient vol­ume was installed before (less than 8 GB);

SSD-dri­ve — they should replace the tra­di­tion­al hard dri­ve, this is the most effec­tive way to speed up the OS.

Upgrade is a rad­i­cal method. He will make you spend mon­ey. And it is pos­si­ble that very con­sid­er­able.

Windows 10 update

Above, we talked about the fact that some users reg­u­lar­ly update the oper­at­ing sys­tem, and the dri­vers become out­dat­ed. But the reverse sit­u­a­tion is also true, when the dri­vers are updat­ed, but the OS itself is not. If you belong to the sec­ond cat­e­go­ry of peo­ple, then try to update Win­dows 10 after all — it is pos­si­ble that this will lead to an increase in per­for­mance.

If you have not updat­ed the oper­at­ing sys­tem for a very long time, then you may need to use the pro­gram
Media Cre­ation Tool. It will allow you to get absolute­ly all the updates that have been devel­oped for Win­dows 10 dur­ing its exis­tence. Down­load it and run it, then do the fol­low­ing:

1. Click the “Accept” but­ton. By doing so, you agree to the pro­posed license.

2. Next, the tool will ask what exact­ly it should do. Select the “Upgrade this PC now” option, and then click the “Next” but­ton.

3. The pro­gram will start down­load­ing the nec­es­sary update files and will also ana­lyze your com­put­er. The dura­tion of the process large­ly depends on the speed of your Inter­net con­nec­tion.

4. As soon as the nec­es­sary files are down­loaded, you should click the “Accept” but­ton, agree­ing to anoth­er license.

5. The search for all kinds of updates will begin again, after which they will be down­loaded to the com­put­er. This process does not require any action from the user. Well, when it ends, you should click the “Install” but­ton.

That’s all. It remains only to wait for the com­put­er to restart and copy all the files into the bow­els of the Win­dows 10 oper­at­ing sys­tem. The dura­tion of this process depends on how long you have not updat­ed your OS.

Restoring Windows 10

Anoth­er rad­i­cal method. It is use­ful for those who are sure that the brakes are caused by a recent instal­la­tion of a pro­gram or an incor­rect OS update. To restore Win­dows, you need to vis­it the appro­pri­ate sec­tion in the “Set­tings”. The process is start­ed by press­ing the “Start” but­ton.

As a result, you will receive the oper­at­ing sys­tem in the state it was in at the time the select­ed restore point was cre­at­ed. If any appli­ca­tions were installed after its cre­ation, they will no longer remain on the com­put­er. It will not be on it and all soft­ware updates and even Win­dows 10 itself.

Conclusion

Now you under­stand that a slow com­put­er is not a sen­tence. Of course, you can buy your­self a new PC or upgrade. But it’s bet­ter not to spend mon­ey, instead, use the meth­ods we have described that serve to speed up per­for­mance. You will imme­di­ate­ly notice that the oper­at­ing sys­tem began to work notice­ably more ade­quate­ly. Final­ly, we recall that there should always be a suf­fi­cient amount of free space on the sys­tem disk. If there is less than 10 GB left, then it is bet­ter to delete some­thing or move it to anoth­er disk — oth­er­wise you will inevitably encounter brakes.