10 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your PC
Computers can be odd creatures. Since a lot of the processing happens in the background you’re likely not to see what is happening unless you know what to look for. Here are some quick things that you can do to speed up your PC. There are some issues a simple reboot can fix so I always start there. If a reboot fails to fix the problem feel free to try the below solutions.
1. There is a runaway program hogging your resources
Open up your task manager with the following key strokes: CTRL+Shift+ESC and once that is opened you may need to click “More Details” if your screen looks like mine did below.
Once you click “More details” we are going to look at that page. It should look something like this . . .
Take note of your usage summary. If you RAM, CPU or Hard Disk is at 100% it’s important to take note of which application is hogging the resource. You can sort by usage if you click on the respective field. For example, in the picture above I have sorted by Memory usage by clicking on “Memory”.
Close the application and reopen to see if this resolves the issue. If it doesn’t, there may be a bug in the software or you may not have enough resources to adequately handle that software. It may be a good idea to look at upgrading your system if this is the case.
2. Check your installed programs.
It’s worth taking a look at your installed programs. Press the following keys:+
When the run dialog box opens type in “appwiz.cpl” without the quotations. This will open your installed programs window shown below.
Navigate through that list and uninstall any programs you no longer utilize and get rid of the bloatware (You may also know it as crapware) that is installed on your PC by the manufacturers. This can free up a lot of resources.
3. Take a look at your startup entries.
Open your task manager again using CTRL+Shift+ESC and navigate to the Startup tab. Once you are there take a look over the programs that are set to “Enabled” That means your computer is opening these when you first turn your system on and they will use resources consistently unless you close them out. While this makes the program open faster it can cause unnecessary slow downs on your PC.
4. What programs are open in your taskbar tray?
This will look similar in Windows 10. The more programs shown here the more resources are being utilized by the system. Try closing some of these out and see if you notice a speed increase.
5. Clean up your disk(s)
This is more useful if your disk is nearly full but it is still a great idea to perform this every 6 months. Open your start menu and start typing “Disk Cleanup” and open the program. It should look like the below picture.
Perform the cleanup operation to clear some space on your drive. You may also notice that your Recycle Bin has a lot of data in it, it is beneficial to rid your system of these files.
6. Check for Malware
Your system may be slow due to Malware on the machine. I find Malwarebytes easy to use and beneficial in checking for system infections. You may download it from the Official Malwarebytes webpage.
7. Replace your hard drive with a solid state drive
Solid state drives are leaps and bounds better than hard disk drives in terms of speed and reliability. Read our article here where we detail the differences.
8. Add more RAM to your computer
As computers get more powerful so do the programs. Gone are the days when 4 GB of RAM was sufficient for day to day usage. My recommendation for a lot of business users is 8GB of RAM if you use a lot of programs at once. (Does your task bar look like mine does?)
9. Change your power settings.
You can do so by opening your start menu and typing “Power Options”. Changing your plan from balanced or power saver to High Performance will increase your electricity usage but will help with the performance of your PC.
10. Turn off indexing within Windows
While indexing is beneficial if you search your PC a lot but it takes time, processing power, memory, and a lot of disk accessing to keep the index up to date. This can negatively impact the performance of the computer. To turn this feature off open your start menu and search for “Indexing Options” and open it up. Click on Modify and uncheck all locations that you don’t need or want indexing to occur in. This will free system resources and hopefully put you a step in the right direction toward improving your PC’s performance.