With this Ultimate Guide, we try to offer a wide selection of options to improve the performance of your Windows 10 and 11 machine. Not all options directly relate to Windows Operating System but they are all aimed at increasing your overall desktop performance.
1. Clean Hardware
Our first suggestion is not a setting on your PC! A large majority of PCs or Laptops have decreased performance due to excessive heat. When your PC or Laptop gets too hot, most modern hardware is designed to decrease its power output and therefore decrease its thermal output.
For laptops, our suggestions are as follows
- Never put your laptop on a soft surface during use. This often results in air vents being covered which increase temperatures.
- Turn off your laptop – Grab a can of compressed air and blow dust out of any visible ventilation holes. Make sure you do this outside or in a well-ventilated area as a surprising amount of dust can come out
For Desktop Users we have these suggestions
- Turn off your desktop
- Carefully open the side of your case
- Grab a can of compressed air and direct it into the processor fan
- Manually clean (with the compressed air) the dust from any intake or extraction fans in your case.
- If your computer has a graphics card fan, give that a blast with the compressed air also.
2. Performance Mode
If your Windows 10 is seemingly slow, checking your computer’s performance mode is the first thing you should do. Windows 10 has a selection of power settings available from Power Saver for laptops through to high performance for plugged in/desktops.
To check your current power settings follow these steps
- Windows Key or Start Button
- Type “Choose a power plan”
- Select “Choose a power plan” option
- Select “High Performance” option
3. Update Drivers
A quick and easy tip to try and grab some extra speed for your Windows 10 device is to make sure your device drivers are up to date.
A driver is a small piece of software that allows your hardware to interact with software/Windows 10. Hardware manufacturers are constantly releasing new and better optimized drivers for the hardware to increase speeds.
4. Error check drives
Through day to day activity, it is possible that your Windows hard drive may become corrupted or damaged. Unfortunately, this is simply the nature of computer hardware!
These corrupt parts of your hard drive can cause your Windows installation to slow down, hang up or even crash completely.
To check if your hard drive has any corruption you can use Windows 10 built-in tool for disk checking.
Follow these steps
- Windows Key or Start Button
- Type “This PC”
- Select “This PC”
- Right-click your Windows hard drive
- Select “Properties”
- Select “Tools”
- Select “Check” Under the Error Checking heading
- Follow the on-screen instructions to completion
5. Remove Old or Unused applications
Over time your Windows 10 installation will gather a whole bunch of rarely used or extraneous applications.
Although they will have fairly low impact on your Windows 10 performance when not running, it is still possible for extra software to be taking up resources through background services or other update programs.
6. Disable Start Up Applications
Along the same lines as old and unused applications, your Windows installation will gather extra unneeded startup applications over time.
These small programs are assigned to open up when your Windows is loading. Although on their own they will likely have a small impact, cumulatively they can slow down your Windows 10 loading speed and therefore affect overall performance.
To disable some startup applications follow these steps
- Windows Key or Start Button
- Type “Task Manager”
- Select “Task Manager”
- Select “Start-up”
- Right-click an application to disable
- Select “Disable” from the context menu
7. Disable Animations
Windows 10 and 11 has a vast selection of flashy effects and animations built in. These are pleasing to the eye and improve the visual impact of Windows, unfortunately, they do take up system resources unnecessarily.
If you don’t mind having a slightly less flashy interface for some faster Windows performance then follow these steps
- Windows Key or Start Button
- Type “advanced system settings”
- Select “View Advanced System Settings”
- Enter your password if prompted
- Select “Settings” under the performance heading
- Select “Adjust for Best Performance”
- Apply/OK
8. Disable Search Indexing
Search Indexing improves the speed at which your Windows 10 and 11 installation can return results from the search tool. It does this by processing all of the data on your pc or laptop to be searchable.
Although this has little impact on faster, newer devices, it can have a large impact on older Windows machines.
To disable Search Indexing follow these steps
- Windows Key or Start Button
- Type “Services.msc”
- Select “Services” application
- Find “Windows Search” in the list of services
- Right click “Windows Search”
- Select “Properties” in the context menu
- Change Startup Type to either disabled or manual
- Apply/OK
9. Clean up Disk
Following a similar train of thought to our removing old and unused application trick, the built-in Windows 11 disk clean up tool can free up vital disk space resources.Over time your Windows 11 installation will accumulate extra temporary files for such things as windows updates or temporary browser related files.
These files, while small, take up precious resources on older machines that can be used to speed up Windows 11.
- To run the disk clean up tool follow these steps
- Windows Key or Start Button
- Type “disk clean-up”
- Select “Disk Clean-Up” Application
- The tool will scan for relevant files to clean up
- Select any files that you want to remove
- Select “Clean up system files” and follow the on-screen instructions
10. Defrag (not SSD)
Data fragmentation is still a problem for a large number of Windows devices. Having data scattered around is similar to a library having books thrown all over the floor. The information is all there, it is just increasingly difficult to locate!
The impact of fragmented data is not a huge one, but it is still worth using the built-in disk defragmentation tool on normal hard drives.
11. Optimize Virtual Memory (Pagefile)
If your Windows 11 desktop or laptop has a small amount of RAM, it is worth making modifications to the virtual memory (page file) allocation.
Virtual Memory is an assigned area of your hard drive that will act like RAM in a pinch. Although it is massively slower than real RAM, it is important to have an optimized allocation size so that you never get truly stuck.
12. Clean up your Registry
The Windows registry is a database of low-level settings for both Windows and the applications installed on your PC.
Over time, as you add and remove software, the registry can end up with unnecessary or broken registry entries. To eliminate these from potentially causing performance issues on your PC you can use CCleaner.
13. Install SSD
Although not a free option, installing an SSD into your desktop or laptop can offer massive speed increases. Startup times, application loading and all-around performance will be sped up by switching away from the much slower mechanical hard drive.
14. Install More/Faster Memory (RAM)
Another paid option is to equip your laptop or desktop with faster/more RAM. By doing so you will be less reliant on the pagefile/virtual memory/Readyboost options.
Be careful to check what type of memory your computer takes along with the maximum capacity.
