Speed up Windows 10
No matter how fast your PC runs Windows 10, you want to run it faster. But there’s no need to upgrade to a new PC. Follow these tips to speed up Windows 10.
Change your power settings
If you’re using Windows 10’s power-saver plan, you’re slowing down your PC. That plan reduces your PC’s performance in order to save energy. (Even desktop PCs typically have a power-saver plan.) Changing your power plan from a power saver to high-performance or balanced will give you an instant performance boost.
To do it, launch Control Panel, then select Hardware and Sound > Power Options. You’ll typically see two options: Balanced (recommended) and power saver. (Depending on your make and model, you might see other plans here as well, including some branded by the manufacturer.) To see the high-performance setting, click the down arrow next to Show Additional Plans.
To change your power setting, simply choose the one you want, then exit Control Panel. High-performance gives you the most oomph but uses the most power; balanced find a median between power use and better performance, and power saver does everything it can to give you as much battery life as possible. Desktop users have no reason to choose a Power saver, and even laptop users should consider the Balanced option when unplugged — and high-performance when connected to a power source.
Disable programs that run on startup
One reason your Windows 10 PC may feel sluggish is you’ve got too many programs running in the background — programs that you may never use, or only rarely. Stop them from running, and your PC will run more smoothly.
Start by launching the Task Manager: Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc or right-click the lower-right corner of your screen and select Task Manager. If the Task Manager launches as a compact app with no tabs, click “More details” at the bottom of your screen. The Task Manager will then appear in all of its full-tabbed glory. There’s plenty you can do with it, but we’re going to focus only on killing unnecessary programs that run at startup.
Click the Startup tab. You’ll see a list of the programs and services that launch when you start Windows. Included on the list is each program’s name as well as its publisher, whether it’s enabled to run on startup, and its “Startup impact,” which is how much it slows down Windows 10 when the system starts up.
To stop a program or service from launching at startup, right-click it and select “Disable.” This doesn’t disable the program entirely; it only prevents it from launching at startup — you can always run the application after launch. Also, if you later decide you want it to launch at startup, you can just return to this area of the Task Manager, right-click the application and select “Enable.”
Many of the programs and services that run on startups, such as OneDrive or Evernote Clipper, may be familiar to you. But you may not recognize many of them. (Anyone who immediately knows what “bzbui.exe” is, please raise your hand. No fair Googling it first.)
The Task Manager helps you get information about unfamiliar programs. Right-click an item and select Properties for more information about it, including its location on your hard disk, whether it has a digital signature, the version number, the file size, and the last time it was modified.
You can also right-click the item and select “Open file location.” That opens File Explorer and takes it to the folder where the file is located, which may give you another clue about the program’s purpose.
Finally, and most helpful, you can select “Search online” after you right-click. Bing will then launch with links to sites with information about the program or service.
If you’re really nervous about one of the listed applications, you can go to a site run by Reason Software called Should I Block It? and search for the file name. You’ll usually find very solid information about the program or service.
Now that you’ve selected all the programs that you want to disable at startup, the next time you restart your computer, the system will be a lot less concerned with unnecessary programs.
Get help from the Performance Monitor
There’s a great tool in Windows 10 called the Performance Monitor that can, among other things, create a detailed performance report about your PC, detail any system and performance issues, and suggest fixes.
To get the report, type performs/report into your search box and press Enter. (Make sure there’s a space between “performs” and the slash mark.) The Resource and Performance Monitor launches and gathers information about your system. It will say that it will take 60 seconds, but I’ve found that it takes several minutes. When the Monitor finishes, it will launch an interactive report.
Enable Fast Startup
From the moment that Windows 10 was released, people started complaining that their bootup times were more sluggish than with previous versions of Windows. If you’re plagued by a lethargic Windows 10 startup, there’s a simple fix: use a feature called Fast Startup.
With Fast Startup, when you shut down your PC, it closes your applications and logs of all users but loads the Windows kernel and drivers to a hibernation file on your hard disk. Then, when you restart your PC, Windows loads the kernel and drivers from the hibernation file, speeding up the startup.
Here’s how to turn it on:
1. Right-click the Start button and select Power Options from the menu that appears.
2. Click “Additional power settings” on the right side of the screen.
3. Click “Choose what the Power buttons do.”
4. From the screen that appears, click “Change Settings that are currently unavailable.”
5. On the screen that appears, check the box next to “Turn on fast startup (recommended).”
6. Click “Save changes.”
That’s all it takes. Note that on some machines Fast Startup isn’t enabled. If that’s the case with yours, you won’t see the “Turn on Fast Startup (recommended)” entry.
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