Windows run faster

To use the procedure above to stop a program from starting automatically, you need to have Windows 10 Version or higher installed. For more info, see How to protect your Windows 10 PC. To scan for viruses using Windows Security Windows 10 Version or later. Wait for Windows Defender Security Center to finish scanning for viruses and malware. In the search box on the taskbar, type restore point , then select Create a restore point from the list of results. Select Next , then choose the restore point related to the app, driver, or update that might be causing the problem.

Windows 11 Windows 10 More Make sure you have the latest updates for Windows and device drivers. Check for Windows updates Do one of the following: If the status says "You're up to date," continue and check for optional updates.

If the status says "Updates are available," select Install now. Select the updates you want to install, then select Install. Restart your PC and see if it seems to run better. Sometimes an optional update, like a new non-critical driver, will be available that may help. If your PC still runs slowly, continue to the next tip. PC still running slowly? Continue to the next tip. To make sure automatic page file management is turned on Select Search on the taskbar, type advanced system in the search box, and then select View advanced system settings , which has Control panel listed underneath it.

You may improve performance if you free some disk space on your PC. Open Storage settings Your drives will be listed in the Storage area. To adjust the visual effects in Windows Select Search , type performance , then select Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows in the list of results.

Restart your PC and see if that speeds up your PC. Restart your PC and see if your performance issues have improved with syncing paused. Find the programs that start automatically Sometimes you can determine which programs start automatically by looking at the program icons in the notification area on the far right of the taskbar.

Open Startup Apps settings In the Startup Apps area, find the program you want to stop from starting automatically and set it to Off. System restore works for changes made in the last 7 to 14 days. Check for Windows updates Do one of the following: If the status says "You're up to date," go to the next tip.

To run the Program Compatibility Troubleshooter In the search box on the taskbar, type troubleshoot , then select Troubleshoot settings , which has System settings listed underneath it. To make sure automatic page file management is turned on In the search box on the taskbar, type advanced system , and then select View advanced system settings , which has Control panel listed underneath it. To adjust the visual effects in Windows In the search box on the taskbar, type performance , then select Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows in the list of results.

Notification area with mouse pointing to show hidden icons Even after you check the notification area, you might still miss some programs that run automatically at startup. Notes: If you turn off a program and it continues to start automatically when Windows starts, you should scan for viruses and malware. Need more help? Join the discussion. Was this information helpful? Yes No. Thank you! Any more feedback? The more you tell us the more we can help.

Can you help us improve? Resolved my issue. Clear instructions. Easy to follow. I generally select them all. Auslogics Registry Cleaner scans for and fixes problems in your Windows Registry. Next, tell it to scan the Registry for problems. That lets you first examine the Registry problems it finds. It now scans your Registry for errors, then shows you what it found. It ranks the errors according to their severity to help you decide which to fix. Here are the latest Insider stories.

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Even on a modern computer, turning off Windows 10's indexing feature will significantly slow down searches of your storage drive for very little performance gain.

On the other hand, if you own a very old computer, turning off Search Indexing will help your system's performance. One of the best apps for cleaning up an overloaded disk is WinDirStat. WinDirStat is both completely free, open-source, and available in both installed and portable versions. Out of all the apps out there that claim to improve performance, no program does it better than a RAM drive. Users then move parts of essential software to the RAM disk, which results in large gains in speed.

However, we advise RAM drive usage only for those who want to improve the performance of a single application. The most important examples of software that benefit from RAM disks are Photoshop, browsers, and video editing software. But you can get away with less. A lot of RAM drive software exist. The free version is limited to 1GB in size. Setting up a RAM disk just requires downloading and installing the software.

After running the software, you need to configure it with the following options:. You can use any size but a smaller capacity limits its utility. Check the box for Set Disk Label.

That way, you can identify the disk in the next step. Configure your browser to read and write cache files to and from the RAM disk. Right-click on your browser shortcut and choose Properties from the context menu. Windows 10 makes it easier than ever to access a browser shortcut. You can do it directly from the Taskbar. From Properties , choose the Shortcut tab. Then within the Target: text input field, append the following code to the end of the text, where "R" is your own RAM disk drive letter:.

Finally, choose OK and restart your browser. From now on, Chrome will read and write cache files to the RAM disk. While a few believe RAM drives to be infeasible, the critics make good points. One of the biggest shortcomings is that RAM drives can make your computer shut down slower. And because they run in the background, older computers might not handle the additional overhead very well.

We've written to death on the subject of malware scanners for good reason: most performance problems originate with malicious programs running wild in the background. We have written before about the best free anti-malware clients , which is a good stopping point for anyone with a slow computer. The Windows registry has all the settings for Windows and other programs. Installing software changes the registry. However, sometimes when a program is uninstalled, it fails to remove those changes.

Over time, thousands upon thousands of registry modifications slow system performance. A registry cleaner removes those changes and other leftovers from uninstalled programs. However, registry cleaners sometimes cause more problems than they solve. While you might see a tiny amount of performance improvement, for the most part, you're likely to see glitchy OS behavior after running a registry cleaner.

The best program out there to clean your registry is CCleaner. However, Piriform, the maker of CCleaner, suffered a security breach that allowed hackers to slip malicious code into two versions of CCleaner. Current CCleaner products do not contain malware. To fix this, right-click on the Start button and click Task Manager. Click the Startup tab click More details if you don't see the Startup tab and peruse the list of programs that start up with your computer.

If you see a program that doesn't need to be there, right-click it and click Disable. You can also arrange the list of programs by Startup impact , if you'd like to see the programs that are taking up the most resources and time.

Windows 10 has a built-in performance troubleshooter that can help you find and fix any problems that might be affecting your PC's speed. To open the troubleshooter, right-click on the Start button and click Control Panel. Under Security and Maintenance at the top, click Troubleshoot common computer problems. Next, under System and Security , click Run maintenance tasks.

When your computer starts up, the boot menu is displayed for a certain amount of time before the operating system loads. This gives you time to do things like start Windows in Safe Mode. You can shave a few seconds off your startup time by changing the boot menu time-out, which is set to 30 seconds by default. To do this, right-click on the Start button and click Control Panel.