How to speed up Windows 10?

[Rasputin]

My windows 10 computer is really slow. It used to be fast and load up quickly when I first bought it, but over time it has slowed down.

What I can do to speed it up? My laptop is plenty powerful: 8 gigabytes memory, i7 processor.

Any suggestions?

 

[Ian]

Welcome to the forums, Rasputin .

If it used to be fast, my first thought would be to check what you have loading at startup. For example, do you have lots of things loading when you first turn your system on, sitting in the system tray. To check, right click the taskbar (the black bat at the bottom) or start button, and click "task manager". Now, view the "startup" tab and see which applications have a "high" or "medium" startup impact.

You can post a screenshot here if you'd like and we can give advice on which things you may be able to disable.

Do you have an SSD in your laptop? That's a sure fire way to speed things up for around $90/£80 - but it would involve making hardware changes.

 

[Tim Locke]

SSD is the hardware fix for sure. I replaced the 500GB 5400 rpm spinner in my Lenovo Ideapad with a 256GB Samsung. I had a USB3 to SATA gadget and a free copy of Paragon so it only took 1/2 hour. Plus another 1/2 hour to open the machine and fit the disk. I put the spinner in a cheap USB 3 enclosure to use as an external backup drive.

The machine is much faster now AND it has another 1 1/2 hours on battery.

 

[Wolfie]

Using something like CCleaner might also help (free and pay versions here):

https://www.piriform.com/CCLEANER

 

[HairBoy]

Ccleaner or Glary Utilities should work fine here. Do not forget to kill some apps which are unnecessary for you. You could also limit the apps that would be run on boot with those two apps.

 

[Grizzly]

deleting temp files (Windows folder and appdata folder) and defragmenting (they call it 'optimizing' nowadays) the HDD will help too.

 

[davehc]

Not for everyone, if you use the search a great deal, but, I have found removing the contents of the index has helped a lot.

 

[Bif]

Go back to 7...

 

[Trouble]

Maybe hold off on going back to Win 7 or even 8 for that matter.
At least until Microsoft addresses this new (actually old) bug.
https://www.onmsft.com/news/strange-ntfs-bug-can-cause-web-pages-to-crash-windows-7-and-8-1-pcs

https://mspoweruser.com/new-holy-hell-website-ad-can-now-crash-windows-7-machine/




Gives a whole new meaning to "What's old is new again"

 

[Bif]

Maybe hold off on going back to Win 7 or even 8 for that matter.
At least until Microsoft addresses this new (actually old) bug.
https://www.onmsft.com/news/strange-ntfs-bug-can-cause-web-pages-to-crash-windows-7-and-8-1-pcs

https://mspoweruser.com/new-holy-hell-website-ad-can-now-crash-windows-7-machine/



Gives a whole new meaning to "What's old is new again"

They appear to have us by the short and curlies...but agreed...bug free is always nice.

 

[Norton]

Bugger!

 

[Wolfie]

My windows 10 computer is really slow

I forgot to ask as to whether or not you have a lot of background processes running at start-up?.

Ctrl + Alt + Del > Task Manager > Start-up.

 

[Rasputin]

Thank you all for the advice, I am still here, but I had another problem which I will need help with. One for a new thread...

I did as you suggested and disabled lots of the slow applications in task manager. I never use most of the icons anyway, and it does seem to have helped. I also tried CCleaner and did a cleanup, which may have contributed.

I don't have a solid state disk, as I need lots of storage capacity. I have 430GB of data on my drive. Maybe something for the future as prices come down.

 

[clifford_cooley]

Simple:

Start of with a clean install
Don't install a bunch of trash​

Once the system has been messed up, it's damn near impossible to get back in top condition. The key to a fast system is to keep it that way.

 

[zinou]

My windows 10 computer is really slow. It used to be fast and load up quickly when I first bought it, but over time it has slowed down.

What I can do to speed it up? My laptop is plenty powerful: 8 gigabytes memory, i7 processor.

Any suggestions?

Are your Windows slow at startup or after ?

If you experience slow boot, you can use Windows Performance Toolkit to record a boot trace and then Analyze it. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/windows-assessment-deployment-kit

Here is a tutorial on how to take a boot trace https://zinetek.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/how-to-use-wpr-to-record-boot-sequence/

share your boot trace and I'll take a look at it.

 

[Regedit32]

I'm not so sure a large dose of patience is not what is actually needed.

Just how fast do you really need that computer to process something.

 

[Wargamer]

You have all provided very good suggestions. To reiterate some in the order of my preference to do would be:

Remove any OEM bloatware you have not used
Disable all non-essential startups in task manager
Disable all apps (or selectively) from running in the background (Settings> Privacy> Background Apps)
Disable all non-essential services using msconfig (for a test and then selectively disable those impacting)
(Note: Tick hide MS services before disabling others)
Use Disk Cleanup, CCleaner and Wise Disk Cleaner (at defaults) to provide additional cleaning
Check your drive fragmentation and manually invoke if too high

Better solutions IMHO (as previously recommended):
Do a clean install
Upgrade to an SSD

Good luck,

Wargamer

 

[Norton]

Regedit I agree with you, Patience will solve many PC problems.

 

[pjaj]

This may not be relevant, but I had a similar problem when I upgraded from 7 to 10 via the automatic download about 18 months ago. Afterwards my PC was very slow starting up and closing down, it could easily take 2-3 minutes, long enough to make a cup of coffee! I tried most of the solutions suggested in various posts above and others, all to no avail. Then my SSD started throwing faults, Windows was repairing it quite often. So I decided to bite the bullet, get a new SSD and reinstall from scratch. A lot of hassle I will agree, but afterwards it now takes less than 20 seconds to boot after the BIOS has transferred control.
Obviously you need to have the installation media for any software you want on the machine, but at least you can dump the bloatware and in my case, several years of old, no longer used stuff.
If you do go this route, remember to register your current (in my case the free upgrade) by opening a Microsoft account. This way you can reinstall from a downloaded copy for free. Just re-log on to the account and MS should activate the install.
ALSO TAKE BACKUPS, THEN TAKE SOME MORE!! A disk image would be good as well so you can at least get back to where you started if anything goes very wrong.

 

[Wargamer]

Regedit I agree with you, Patience will solve many PC problems.

Patience does not solve an unexpected PC slow down.

It just allows one to live with the change in responsiveness.