Windows 10 is a heavily-optimised operating system and boasts better performance across a wider variety of devices than previous versions of Windows.<\/p>\n
However, Windows machines have a habit of slowing down over time due to a variety of factors – both software and hardware related.<\/p>\n
Boot times can slow down over time due to an increasing number of apps running at startup, and an inconsistent update schedule can cause some applications to run sub-optimally.<\/p>\n
If you are seeing slowdowns or sluggish boot times, here is what you should do.<\/p>\n
Keeping your Windows 10 installation up to date is crucial for both security and performance.<\/p>\n
Many software updates aim to increase the performance of applications or fix bugs which can cause system slowdowns in certain situations.<\/p>\n
Additionally, maintaining a regular update schedule will help protect your machine from malicious applications and will patch vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n
Keeping your system updated will also reduce the chance of app incompatibility and will keep your PC healthier for a longer period of time.<\/p>\n
Many applications are set to run at startup once installed and can have a significant effect on your system’s boot time.<\/p>\n
It is a good idea to periodically clean your startup applications to ensure that no unnecessary apps are set to open as soon as you log in to your PC.<\/p>\n
To control which applications run at startup, open Task Manager by pressing Control + Shift + Escape, and navigate to the Startup tab.<\/p>\n
From here, you can see which apps are set to run at startup and disable programs which you do not use immediately after starting up.<\/p>\n
If you find that your hardware sometimes struggles to manage multiple windows, you can get it to run faster by disabling effects.<\/p>\n
To begin this process, press the Windows Key + R to open the Run interface, enter “Sysdm.cpl” into the field, and press Enter.<\/p>\n
This will open the System Properties Window. Navigate to the Advanced tab and select Settings under the Performance section.<\/p>\n
From this window, you can manually adjust visual settings to tweak your Windows 10 effects to your preference, or simply select “Adjust for best performance” to disable all visual effects.<\/p>\n
If your Windows 10 performance problems are not due to startup bloatware or a lack of system updates, you may need to upgrade your hardware.<\/p>\n
The quickest way to improve the performance of your PC is to upgrade from a mechanical hard drive to a solid state drive (SSD).<\/p>\n
SSDs offer increased read and write times, resulting in faster boot times and quicker navigation through storage.<\/p>\n
Aditionally, if you often find your PC slowing down while multitasking you may want to upgrade the amount of RAM in your system.<\/p>\n
Windows 10 features an Automatic Maintenance tool which runs a number of maintenance tasks in the background.<\/p>\n
By default, this maintenance feature runs tasks daily at 02:00, and its schedule is configurable from the Settings menu.<\/p>\n
If you do not wish to wait until the next scheduled maintenance, you can run the maintenance process manually from this menu.<\/p>\n
Additionally, you can also use the disk cleanup feature to remove unnecessary files from storage which may be slowing down your system.<\/p>\n
To access Disk Cleanup, select the Local Disk in File Explorer, access the Drive Tools menu, and select the Cleanup option.<\/p>\n
If you have been using your Windows 10 computer for a while and noticed periodic slowdowns, there is a fix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341028,"featured_media":127880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[52575,35,3198,52573,26970],"class_list":["post-269097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-disk-cleanup","tag-headline","tag-pc","tag-performance-improvement","tag-windows-10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269957,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269097\/revisions\/269957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}