If you want to optimize Windows 10, follow these tips on how to speed up Windows 10 today for free and enhance the user experience.
The best way to increase your Windows performance is to optimize your system settings. There is no rocket science behind improving your system performance. Just try out these simple tips and tricks to speed up your Windows 10 and enhance its performance.
The multifunctional features of Windows give us a wide hold for installing tons of software and using many files in your local disc space. This is where your PC will get a load with lots of stuff and will be prone to performance and system issues.
Want your PC to process fast? We’ve got you covered. Follow these simple steps and in a few minutes, your system will be faster with an increase in speed and will be less likely to counter any issues.
Table of Contents
1. System Power Settings
Many of us are using Power saving mode while working on the system trying to save power & reduce the screen brightness, but using Power saver mode you are reducing CPU’s speed and performance to save energy. You can try using Balanced or High-Performance mode to boost up your system speed.
To apply this setting, you can follow the below steps –
Open Control Panel >> Click on System – Display, Sound, notifications, Power >> Click on Power & Sleep >> Click on Additional power settings
Select the High-performance settings or Balanced Settings and close the control panel.
Selecting High Performance will give you a plethora of Power, which helps your operating system to perform at its peak. On similar lines, selecting Balanced will be in the middle of the grey area between optimal power use & optimal performance.
Desktop users can always use High-Performance mode, as there is nothing to concern about battery life, and even laptop users should use High-Performance mode when connected to a power source to speed up the Windows device.
2. Use ReadyBoost for Disk Caching
In regular use of the operating system, Windows 10 stores the cached data on your hard disc, and when it’s needed, it retrieves it from there. The time taken to fetch cached data depends on the speed of your hard disk. If you have an external hard disk instead of SSD, then you can speed up your cache using Windows’ – ReadyBoost feature.
ReadyBoost feature helps by speeding up your Windows operating system by fetching the data from the swifter cache as it is much faster than a normal hard drive.
To use the ReadyBoost feature, follow the below steps in sequence –
Plug-in USB flash drive into your system. Try using the flash drive supporting at least USB 2.0 or USB 3.0. Try using the flash drive having at least double the size of your system RAM for best performance.
After connecting the flash drive –
Go to My Computer >> Right-click on your flash drive >> Click on Properties >> Click on ReadyBoost tab.
When you see the above window tab of ReadyBoost, select “Dedicate this device to ReadyBoost” & leave the cache size as it is or change it according to your preference, then click on Apply and then on OK.
Please make sure that your flash drive meets all the minimum requirements, otherwise you will get a message like – “This device cannot be used for ReadyBoost”. So, you need to use a new flash drive that meets all the required performance standards.
As your operating system functions, ReadyBoost will start entering the cache with files, thus you will experience an increase in disk activity. Thus, as you use your Desktop/ Laptop, it might take some time for your cache to fill & provide its best performance. If still you don’t see any improvement in performance, try using the flash drive with higher storage capacity and your Windows device will speed up for sure.
3. Turn off Windows tips and tricks
As you use your Desktop / Laptop, you would have experienced some recommendations from Windows, to change some settings or offering some tips or tricks, which you might use to improve your experience. But candidly, I have rarely found these tips useful. As to suggest these recommendations, Windows tracks your activity, which will cause privacy implications.
Thus, Windows monitoring your activity can cause your PC to slow down. So speeding up your operating system would require Windows to stop giving less relevant recommendations. Thus follow the steps to implement required settings –
Go to Settings >> Click on System – Display, Sound, notifications, Power >> Select Notification & actions tab >> Scroll down and deselect the “Get tips, tricks, and suggestions as you use Windows”
Turning off Windows’ suggestions should make your system run smoothly & also no need to worry about privacy measures. This would work like a charm. You will experience an increase in the speed of your Windows.
4. Stop Auto file Syncing
Microsoft offers cloud-based One-Drive storage, which is a built-in feature in Windows 10. This helps you in keeping your files synced and readily available. It is also very useful to back up your data, to access it whenever & wherever you need. You will be just a few clicks away to access your data.
Windows constantly sync the files between your system and cloud storage and thus slowing down your PC. As Windows is engaged in performing the sync, it might slow down your PC for operating other activities. There is also an option available to pause the sync for a few hours. You can verify that the syncing is slowing down your PC by pausing the sync for a few hours and gauging the results.
To turn off the syncing, you can follow the below steps –
Go to notification area of Taskbar & right-click on OneDrive icon >> A pop-up will appear & select Settings >> Then click on Account.
Click on “Unlink this PC” >> then click on “Unlink Account”.
This will allow you to save your files on OneDrive folder, but it won’t sync your files to the cloud. You can click here to sign in your OneDrive account. Doing this will improve the processing speed of your Windows operating system and will enhance your user experience.
5. Free Up Hard Disk
If you are a heavy user with lots of flies & applications which you don’t need in your system, you might slow down your PC. These junk files could acquire a lot of space that would bloat your hard disk. Deleting these junk files can experience an increase in performance.
Storage Sense is one of the many lucrative features offered by Windows to manage its storage. It is a modern solution for Disk cleaning which helps in free up space by regularly monitoring your PC and removing the junk files, temporary internet files, unused downloaded files, and scrap recycle bin files.
To access the Storage Sense, follow the below steps –
Open Settings >> Click on System – Display, Sound, notifications, Power >> Click on Storage. Shift the toggle from Off to On.
You can fully customize the time you want in Storage Sense to delete the unused files from the Downloads folder and can also set the time to wait to remove files from the Recycle Bin folder. Storage Sense uses the process called Dehydration to save the older, unused files on OneDrive & making it available online, illustrating as placeholders on your device, thus making room for new entities.
There’s one more way to free-up some logged space by deleting the older version of Windows. You just need to tick the checkbox next to “Delete the previous version of Windows”. Storage Sense will delete the old Windows version 10 days after installation of the update. Please note that, if you delete the previous Windows version, then you cannot revert to the older version of Windows.
6. Disabling Visual effects
Windows 10 offers many dazzling features like visual effects to give the interface an attractive look. Windows constantly release many addon features with each update. These fancy features might affect your system performance.
Enabling all the Effects might make your PC less responsive. There are 20 Visual effects you can manage & can improve the performance of your PC according to your requirement. Your PC is already designed to perform well, by enabling the effects to make it look fancy, you are jeopardizing its performance over its prettiness.
To manage the settings for applied Visual effects, please follow the below-mentioned steps –
Click on the Windows Search button and type sysdm.cpl >> System Properties dialog box will appear >> Select Advance Tab from tab options
>> Click on Settings in Performance section >> Performance dialog box will a full list of special effects will appear on the screen.
Try to select only required effects and uptick the remaining options to make your PC more responsive. Also, you can select the “Adjust for best performance” option to auto-select the options for optimize performance & to speed up your Windows device.
7. Use Automated Windows Maintenance
Windows always need to run the Maintenance in the background of your PC to protect it from potential threats. It performs system scanning and diagnostics to keep your PC safe from security threats. It includes many functions such as. Security scanning, Windows defender update & disc optimization.
Windows designed this function to keep your PC optimized & running all the maintenance actions in the background without affecting its performance. Usually, it happens every day at 2:00 AM by default or at customized time adjusted during the Windows setup. When there is enough power source available & your PC is in sleep mode, Windows will run its system diagnosis in the background without affecting its performance.
To use this feature to the fullest, please follow the below-mentioned steps –
Open your Control Panel >> Select System and Security >> Click on Security and Maintenance >> Select the Maintenance tab
In the Automatic Maintenance section, select Start Maintenance to start the maintenance right now. You can also select the Change maintenance settings option and select the desired time to start the windows diagnosis and check the box right next to “Allow scheduled maintenance to wake up my computer at the scheduled time”. And click Ok.
Regularly using the Automatic Windows maintenance feature will keep your PC healthy as it includes all the operations like disc fragmentation, scanning windows defender, and other system diagnosis tasks.
8. Remove Bloatware
Windows offer many applications pre-installed in your PC, which takes up a lot of disk space. Every PC comes up with pre-installed software like some flash games, live TV apps, health & fitness apps, which no one used. These apps are just consuming your PC’s disk space and making your PC slow.
You can identify these apps & adware by running a full system scan using your installed Anti-virus or by using windows defender. You should remove this unnecessary preloaded software, termed as bloatware, from your system to improve your PC’s performance.
Windows provide these softwares because manufacturers have a contract with these companies by providing a service, and in return, they collect user information, and thus you get recommendations as per your activity on your device.
Windows just want to add some tools that will add functionality to the system and to make it more robust in performance. But keeping these will consume a lot of disk space and will continue to show pop-up adds because of adware.
When you buy a new PC, it’s a good practice to uninstall the apps which you are sure you won’t be using before installing the required applications. It’s not like all the pre-installed softwares are bad, some are useful, and many of us use these apps in our daily routine.
To remove these bloatware applications, please follow the below steps-
Open your Settings >> Click on Apps – Uninstall, defaults, optional features >> Click on “Apps & features” >> A list of apps and features installed in your device will occur. Just click on the apps you want to uninstall and two options will pop up on your screen. Select Uninstall and remove it from your device.
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9. Defragmenting Hard Disk
As you load your hard drive, it becomes more fragmented. This will slow down your device. When a disk gets fragmented, it stores the files unconventionally and thus increases the time to process it before running. The inefficient use of hard disk slows down your PC and directly affects the performance.
To tackle this problem, Windows 10 offers a built-in defragmentation application that you can use to defragment your drives manually or can customize the time to run automatically the defragmentation process.
To defrag your drives, please follow the below steps –
Open search tab in your PC and type – defrag and press enter >> A dialog box will appear named as Optimize Drives >> Select the drive you want to defrag >> Click on Optimize to defrag that drive.
You can select multiple drives at the same time by pressing control and selecting the drives. Defragmenting will organize your hard drive, and will improve the responsiveness & speed of your hard drives and thus improving your device performance.
10. Regularly Shutdown your PC
It’s good practice to always shutdown your Windows when not in use. It helps in keeping your device healthy & doing this will clear out any excess usage of RAM. Shutting down or by restarting your device will kill all the background processing and will improve your device performance.
Windows regularly download the latest updates to make your PC more efficient and less prone to the virus, but to install these updates, you need to restart your PC or shut it down as when you will resume your PC again, the updates will automatically get install. Downloading the updates and not installing it will make your PC more sluggish and will affect its performance.
If you are using your office PC and it’s responding slowly, seeking the IT help will first target to switch it off and fire it up again. While restarting it, it will troubleshoot all the affected areas and clears out the excess use of RAM & increase the speed of your Windows operating system, thus making room for other applications to run.
Conclusion
Try out these tips and tricks to make your PC more efficient and responsive. We have tried to cover all the points to improve your PC performance and you will definitely experience an increase in the speed of your Windows device if you had encountered any problem before.
Please let us know in the comment section about which trick was the most useful trick to improve your device speed and performance.