Today, Windows 10 runs well on almost any computer you can buy, but that doesn’t mean you’ll always get good performance. If Windows 10 is losing time, why not try some of the following ways to speed up Windows 10?
Table of Contents
1. Restart your computer
It’s easy to keep a Windows session going for days, weeks, or even months. Windows is just so stable these days. That’s great, but the downside is that apps can start to slow down clogging things up by misbehaving with memory and CPU resources. If your Windows computer is sluggish, first try turning it off and on again to see if that helps.
2. Use SSD
While it will cost you a little, one of the biggest speed boosts you can give Windows is to install it on a Solid State Drive (SSD). These drives are many times faster than mechanical spinning hard drives.
You also don’t have to spend a fortune. If cost is a concern, consider buying a relatively small SSD (e.g. 250GB) and then using it as the drive to install Windows along with some of your core apps. On almost any computer, swapping to an SSD provides dramatic and immediate speed improvements.
SSDs can be a little tricky, so we have some recommended readings for you before pulling out a credit card. See SATA 3 vs M.2 vs NVMe, SSD Buying Guide and Everything you need to know about SSD Wear & Tear.
3. Install more RAM
Random Access Memory (RAM) is your computer’s fast working memory space. When there isn’t enough data to hold all of your operating system and application data, Windows is forced to swap data in RAM to and from your hard drive. This is one of the biggest performance disasters a computer can have, slowing everything down. The simplest solution is to add more RAM to your system.
First, familiarize yourself with Windows’ RAM requirements to make sure you have enough. Also, check the RAM requirements of the apps you want to run at the same time to see how much RAM you need.
You may not actually have to spend money to upgrade yet, try the suggestions in 7 ways to clear memory and increase RAM on Windows and How to allocate more RAM for specific applications in Windows.
4. Adjust your paging file for better performance
If you have to rely on the RAM paging file for your current workload and things are slowing down too much, you should consider optimizing your paging file. Luckily we have a simple guide on how to do it, so check out How to Optimize Paging Files in Windows and take a moment to get the right balance of paging file sizes .
5. Run Disk Cleanup
There are many nooks and crannies where random junk accumulates on your hard drive. These temporary files can slow down your system long after you no longer need them, but finding and deleting them manually will be a chore. Instead, try running Disk Cleanup to automatically find and delete these files. We have a drive cleaning guide at How to run Disk Cleanup in Windows 10.
6. Change Windows Performance Settings
Windows has a lot of visually appealing settings, but they come at a cost! On lower-end computers, disabling some or all of Windows visual decorations can free up system resources:
- Open Start Menu and choose gear settings Icon.
- Option System.
- Option About.
- Option Advanced system setup.
- Option Setting Below Performance And after that Tuned for best performance.
- Option ALRIGHT.
Now Windows won’t be as flashy anymore, but it will be faster.
7. Streamline Your Startup Applications
With every Windows restart, there will probably be a long list of applications waiting to be run at startup. Many of these can have a big impact on how long it takes before you can start using your PC. You should go through all the applications that are set to start automatically with Windows and disable the ones you don’t need. Watch How to disable or change the startup program in Windows 10.
8. Enable High Performance
Windows is an operating system that is very power conscious and may be limiting your computer’s performance to save battery power or reduce your monthly electricity bill. However, if your system is wall-mounted, why not unlock it to its full potential? All but what you have to do is:
- Open Start Menu and choose gear settings Icon.
- Option System.
- Option Power & Sleep.
- Option Additional source settings.
- Option High performance.
Your computer should now be powered with as much power as it needs to achieve peak performance.
9. Enable Fast Boot in BIOS
Most motherboards have a fast boot option that you can use to cut down on the number of things the BIOS does at startup and to eliminate any artificial delays such as standby issues. you press the BIOS launch button. Check your motherboard’s manual for specifics on how to do it on your system.
10. Use Sleep or Hibernation
Instead of shutting down your computer completely, consider using sleep or hibernation, both of which start up faster than a cold boot. If you don’t know what either of these modes is, please read What is the difference between Sleep and Hibernate in Windows 10?
11. Pause or Stop Syncing Cloud Apps
Cloud apps like OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox are convenient ways to back up and share files on your computer, but if they’re using your disk while you try to do something else, it can may cause performance problems.
So, if you’re running any of these or similar cloud sync apps on your computer, consider turning off auto-sync or scheduling an overnight sync when you’re not trying. use the computer.
For an example of how this works, see How to turn off OneDrive on your Windows 10 PC.
12. Turn off search indexing
To ensure that you get instant search results in Windows, there is a file indexing program that runs in the background for certain periods of time. On some computers, search indexing can cause performance issues, but you can disable it without much difficulty. Just read Disable Indexing in Windows for Better Performance for details.
13. Check for Malware
There are all kinds of malware that can cause your computer to stop working, so you should run anti-virus and anti-malware software to rule out malware as the culprit. slow Windows experience. If you’re not sure how to do it, read on How to completely remove malware with free tools.
14. Update your drivers
Incorrect or outdated drivers can often be the culprit for poor performance. Manually checking to make sure your drivers are up to date is a pain, so you might want to read our guide on how to automatically update device drivers.
15. Turn off background apps
If your computer isn’t particularly high-end, background programs can eat into your hardware’s performance pool. To turn off background apps:
- Open Start Menu and choose gear icon settings.
- Option Privacy.
- Option Background apps.
- Turn off all background apps or do it for individual apps that you don’t need.
For most modern computers you shouldn’t need to do this, but on severely constrained machines it’s one of those small performance gains that can really add up in the end.
That ends our list of Windows 10 speeding tips. Feel free to share your own performance-enhancing knowledge with the rest of the community in the comments below. As a bonus, check out our super guide to 99 ways to make your computer faster.
