Windows 10 Speed Up

Is your windows 10 computer running slow follow  these steps to speed up windows 10  and maximize your pcs performance. 

Number one ultimate performance your windows 10  pc actually has a speed setting so why not set it   let’s go to the start menu into settings system  and select power and sleep over to the right click  on additional power settings this gives you a  list of power saving options to improve the speed  or the power saving consumption you want to select  ultimate performance if it’s available in the list  otherwise select high performance that’ll maximize  the speed of your computer at the expense of power  consumption select the one you want and close  that window. 

Number two advanced system settings click on the start menu go to settings system and  select about from the left menu on the right side  choose advanced system settings and under the  advanced tab click on settings for performance  this will default to let windows choose what’s  best for your computer but you have a choice  between best appearance and best performance you  can improve the speed of your computer by changing  this to best performance. 

I do recommend checking  this box to smooth edges of screen fonts or the  fonts in your browser will not look very good  also turn on the show thumbnails instead of icons  while were here click the advanced tab and make  sure that this is set to programs for the best  performance rather than background services that  will keep your foreground applications running the  best hit okay and close those windows. 

Number three  graphics performance from the same system menu click on display on the left scroll down to  the bottom and select graphics settings select  this option to change your default graphics  setting and turn this on to improve performance  this will take advantage of the gpu  acceleration of your graphics adapter in this list also look at these apps and  see what setting they have configured  right now they’re listed as power saving. 

But if  you click on one you can go to options and you  can select a high performance option for the  graphics adapter that you have connected so  if you have multiple graphics adapters it might be  defaulting to the slower version make sure to pick  high performance and save that setting you can  also add other apps to the list click browse here  and go to the c drive and find the program  that you want to add into the list for  example I have camtasia and with the camtasia  studio I can add that application to the list  and go into the options and set it to high  performance this will ensure that you’re using the  fastest graphics adapter in your computer.

Number  four system configuration click on your start  menu and in the menu scroll down and find windows  administrative tools underneath that find system  configuration and open it in this menu click on  the boot tab and check this box for no gui boot  that removes the splash screen that comes up  when you boot your computer and it will make your  computer run faster without it while you’re here  click on advanced options most people recommend  turning this box on and then selecting the maximum  number of processors in your system it defaults  to the maximum number of processors when this is  turned off. 

So make sure that’s turned off and hit  ok now click on the services tab check this box to  hide all the Microsoft services and look through  this list to see if there’s any services running  that you know you don’t need most of these are   system related but if you have some applications  you no longer need you can turn them off to make  sure that they’re not part of your system when  you start up your computer when you’re done hit ok  and it will prompt you to reboot your computer  restart now if you want to execute those changes.  

Number five privacy settings lets go back to  start settings but this time go into privacy and  under general turn these four settings off that  turns off some annoying data collection tools also  go to the diagnostics and feedback and turn this  off as well scroll down and turn off this tailored  experiences that eliminates the collection of  diagnostic data which can slow your machine down.

Number six turn off game mode if you don’t use  your computer for high-end gaming then you can  improve performance by turning off those features  lets go back into the settings again under gaming  and on the Xbox game bar turn this option off now  go over to game mode and lets turn game mode off  under captures turn off this recording in the  background and turn off recording audio when  turned on all of these features take performance  away from your system and move it to gaming  now that they’re disabled it should improve your  performance. 

Number seven indexer performance  Microsoft has added a new feature in the latest  version of windows 10 to improve the search index  performance lets go back into the settings again  but this time choose search click on searching  windows scroll down and you’ll see a setting here  for indexer performance when you turn this on it respects the device power mode settings  since we set the power mode to performance  rather than power savings it’ll use that new  setting to improve the indexing feature since  indexing normally happens in the background this  should improve the performance of your machine.  

Number 8 64-bit apps you can improve the  performance of your apps on your computer by  installing 64-bit apps this is only going to work  if you have a 64-bit operating system in windows  you can check that by going into settings system  about and look right here at the system type  the 32-bit operating system has a limitation  of 4 gigabytes of installed ram that it uses  in applications but if you have the 64-bit you  can use a much larger amount of ram and this is  particularly helpful with apps like excel that use  a ton of memory when they run if your 32-bit is  installed you may be able to upgrade your windows  operating system to 64-bit to see this improvement.  

With 64-bit installed you can go into things  like office and go to the install office  other installs come down here to apps and devices  and you’ll see that for Microsoft office and for  Skype and other apps you have a choice between  a 64-bit and a 32-bit with the latest versions  of windows 10 on a 64-bit operating system you  want to make sure to install the 64-bit version  of office if you’re currently set to 32 you may  want to remove and reinstall the 64-bit version to improve your performance the same thing is  true of other apps installed on your windows pc  so always use the 64-bit when possible. 

Number nine startup apps go to the bottom of your  screen and right-click on the taskbar select  task manager and then choose the startup tab  this is a list of apps that load  automatically when you boot your computer if you disable a number of these then  you’ll improve the performance of your pc  so take a look through this list and see which  ones you don’t need you can also click on the  startup impact and see which ones have a high  impact on your computer any of them you know  are not necessary click on it and choose disable  the less apps running the better the performance. 

Number 10 transparency effects click on the  start menu go to settings into personalization   and then select colors from the left menu down  here is a setting for transparency effects  it’s what gives the windows the see-through  look when you move them around the screen  turn this off to get a slight  improvement to your performance.

 

Number 11 remove bloat ware click on  the start go to settings into apps  and then take a look at apps and features.  You’ll  see a list of all the apps installed on your  computer and you want to look for ones that are  bloat ware  is apps that are installed for  trial uses of different software or other types  of helpful utilities that come with your machine  or get downloaded when you download other software  from the web these little nasty pieces of program  take up a lot of resources and don’t accomplish  anything in your system take a look through the  list see if you see anything unusual that  you’re not recognizing and get rid of it  select one click uninstall and that  will remove the app from your system.  

Number 12 disk cleanup not only is disk cleanup  good for maintenance of your computer but it  can optimize your performance as well  come down to the search bar type in disk  and select disk cleanup from the menu it defaults  to your drive os hit ok and it brings up a list  of files to delete with the amount of space  being used select this clean up system files  and choose your default drive again this can  take several minutes to run as it collects data  especially if it’s been a long  time since you’ve run this  take a look through this list and check any  boxes of the things that you want to remove   and hit ok that deletes those files permanently  and will improve the performance of your system.

Number 13 remove desktop shortcuts do you have a  screen like this with a million different icons on  it this will slow down the performance of your  computer every time windows switches between  applications or different windows it has to reload  all these icons if you want to improve performance  remove them or at least move them into a folder  on your desktop to avoid all of these loading  every time you switch windows. 

Number 14 delivery  optimization Microsoft has a new feature in the  latest version of windows 10 that allows you  to control windows updates and the delivery  you can access it by going to start settings  and security and click on delivery optimization  here you’ll see that it says delivery optimization  provides you with windows and store app updates  and other Microsoft products quickly and reliably  sounds great it allows you to download from  other pcs or from the internet any of your windows  updates that all sounds wonderful where it gets  tricky is when you read this right here turn this  on your pc may send parts of previously downloaded.

  

Windows updates and apps to pcs on your local  network or on the internet this means that your  machine is being used to upload data to other pcs  on the internet and that’s going to take away from  your performance by using the bandwidth on your  internet connection and also background processes  on your machine so i recommend turning this off  the only time you might want to leave this on  is if you have a large network with multiple  machines and you want to share updates rather  than having each machine pull the bandwidth  through your internet connection one at a time for the home user turn this off and then go into  advanced options and you’ll also see that it has  settings here for the downloads where you can  limit the amount of bandwidth if you turn it off . 

you don’t need to worry about this if you leave  it on you can limit how much speed is going to be  used for doing those downloads down here you can  control the upload settings and my recommendation  is either turn off the other setting completely  or at least check this box and slide this all the  way down so that your machine is not being  used to update other pcs on the internet  that can be a significant performance disadvantage  you’ll notice this sometimes when you’re working  on your computer and its sluggish and you see  your internet connection cranking like crazy.

  

That’s because it’s using your computer to  update other people on the internet you can  also see on the previous screen the activity  monitor which gives you an idea of how much  download data there has been and how much is being  used for upload mines zeroed out because I just  did a recent update and it reset it but take a  look at this and if you see a large upload then  that’s something that you want to disable  to improve the performance of your machine.

 

Number 15 remove Cortina  is a little  assistant that Microsoft has added to recent  versions of windows but it uses up resources  to run if you want to get rid of Cortina  just come down here to the search bar type  in edit and hit enter open this window up  go into computer configuration  administrative templates  windows components scroll down to  search and look for this allow Cortina  if you double click this you can disable it and  hit ok close that window and reboot your computer  after a reboot you’ll see Cortina is gone and  no longer using resources on your computer.

  

Number 16 ssd boot drive a solid state drive  is one of the best things you can do to improve  the performance on your computer you can check for  this in the start settings system storage and come  down to the bottom and choose optimize drives this  will tell you the media type for your different  drives that you have in your system in this case  the windows c which has the icon for windows is  the boot drive and the operating system and its  a solid state drive d drive is a hard disk drive  in general a solid state drive is going to  boot your computer quicker it’s going to run  browsers faster and especially gaming and high  intensity disk disc io applications. 

If you don’t  have a solid-state drive as your primary boot  drive then consider doing that as an upgrade  or at least look for an ssd boot drive on  any new system that you plan to purchase  it makes a significant difference  to the performance in your computer  and while we’re here probably not a bad idea to  go ahead and click the optimize on those drives.

Number 17 windows reset if you tried many  different things and you can’t get your  system to run smooth you could do a windows reset  to get it back to your original windows install  go to start settings update and security and click  on recovery here you have options to reset this pc  or go back to the previous version of  windows if you reset the pc it gives  you a choice between keeping your files  but removing all the apps and settings  or you can choose to remove everything and  it’ll wipe everything out and start over fresh  both of those options give you a clean install of  windows to begin installing all your applications  again and either one of these may be necessary  to improve the performance of windows 10.