Windows 10: Optimize Performance of Windows 10

How to: Optimize Performance of Windows 10


Information This tutorial will provide you with a list of suggestions to help optimize, speed up, and improve the performance of Windows 10.

You can pick and choose which listed suggestions you would like to do, or feel comfortable doing. If you do not notice an increase in performance or have a problem with the suggestion, then you can always go back and undo the suggestion at it's provided tutorial link.


If you like, please feel free to post any of your own suggestions that you find to help improve the performance of Windows 10.


Note Windows 10 Minimum System Requirements

• Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC(more info)
• RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit
• Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS
• Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver
• Display: 800x600 screen resolution

Here's How:

1. Scan your PC for Malware
Malware or a virus on your PC can often be the cause of many issues on your PC, let alone be a huge security risk. You should do a full scan of your PC with a Windows Defender offline scan or an AV program like Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free, and remove any found threats. If you need help with an infected PC issue, then please create a new thread in our AntiVirus, Firewalls, and System Security forum area for one of our security experts to take a look at it.
2. Install More and/or Faster RAM
The more RAM (memory) you have, the better your performance can be up to a point. Usually 4 GB (32-bit) or 8 GB (64-bit) will be the sweet spot and plenty unless you do memory intensive actions such as video editing or a lot of multitasking.

Memory performance will depend on fast the bandwidth MHZ rating (higher the better) is, and if you are using DDR3 memory in triple channel mode instead of just one or a mix of RAM sticks in only single channel mode. It's best to have all of your RAM sticks with the exact same specs.

You will need to check your motherboard specs to see how much and what type of RAM it supports.
3. Use a SSD (Solid State Drive) instead of HDD (Hard Disk Drive)
Installing Windows 10 on a SSD will give you a dramatic increase in performance over a HDD.

SSD vs HDD | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews

SSD vs Hard Drive
4. Upgrade to a Better Video Graphics Card
If you're a gamer, then upgrading your video card to a better one can give you much better FPS (frames per second) and performance. In some situations, better video cards can be a huge benefit even without heavy onscreen video work, because certain applications can leverage the GPUs for calculations. If your current card and motherboard support SLI or CrossFireX, adding a second card and bridging them will be a good option as well.
5. Install the Latest BIOS and Device Drivers
Make sure that you have the latest available drivers installed for all of your devices, and BIOS version for your motherboard. These will often have updates that correct new bugs, bugs from the previous versions, and may add new features, and increase performance. You can get them at your device manufacturer's website. The release notes (if available) of the driver or BIOS version will tell you what changes have been made since the last version to see if you wish to install it or not. Be sure to have the correct versions for your 32 bit or 64 bit Windows 10.
6. Check for and Install Windows Updates
Microsoft usually releases important updates on the second Tuesday once a month. However, updates could be released at any time. You should check for and install available Windows Updates that could include bug fixes, security patches, Windows Defender definitions, etc.... that could help keep stable and/or improve the performance of Windows.
7. Use a Faster DNS Server
Most ISPs like to brag about how much bandwidth they are giving you, but they don't mind letting the rest of their infrastructure slowly get overwhelmed or deteriorate. Among the biggest offenders are the DNS servers our ISPs use. If you want to know why things seem to take forever to start loading, slow DNS servers are often the cause. You might consider adding or using a fast DNS server like Google Public DNS as your primary DNS server in your TCP/IP settings to see how it compares to your ISP.
8. Use the "High Performance" Power Plan
The "High performance" power scheme plan maximizes system performance and responsiveness. However, if you use a mobile PC running on battery power, then you will notice that your battery doesn't last as long while using this plan. You can adjust your power plan settings to fit your needs.

Caution: Using the "High performance" power scheme may cause some laptops to run hotter than normal.
9. Turn On Fast Startup for a Hybrid Boot/Shutdown
Fast startup (aka: hiberboot, hybrid boot, or hybrid shutdown) is turned on by default in Windows and is a setting that helps your PC start up faster after shutdown. Even faster than hibernate. Windows does this by saving an image of the Windows kernel and loaded drivers to the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys) upon shutdown so when you start your PC again, Windows simply loads the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys) into memory to resume your PC instead of restarting it.
10. Turn On Fast Boot
The Fast Boot feature for UEFI motherboards has a Fast and Ultra Fast option that allows your PC to boot much faster than normal.
11. Disable or Reduce Hibernate if Not Used
If you do not use hibernate or disabling hibernate will save you a GB+ size file from being saved on your hard drive when you hibernate the PC. When hibernate is disabled, the shut down time will also be shorter by not having to wait on memory being saved to the hiberfil.sys file.

If you do not use specify the hiberfile type as reduced[/b] to significantly reduce the size of the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys) to about half of its full size.
12. Turn Off Unneeded Visual Effects
You can optimize performance by changing how menus and windows appear. Uncheck the visual effect options that you do not want or need, or select the Adjust for best performance option, to help performance. The most common visual effects to uncheck are:

• Animate controls and elements inside windows
• Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
• Animations in the taskbar
• Fade or slide menus into view
• Fade or slide ToolTips into view
• Fade out menu items after clicking
• Show shadows under windows
• Slide open combo boxes

13. Speed Up Windows Shut Down Time
You can set and adjust the HungAppTimeout, WaitToKillAppTimeout, and/or WaitToKillServiceTimeout values for how long Windows waits for hung programs and other programs to save data and close before shutting down.
14. Reduce Time to Display "Choose and operating system" at Boot
If you have more than one operating system installed along with Windows 10 for a dual or multi boot system, then you could change the amount of time you wait before the default operating system runs automatically at startup, or until you select an OS to run.
15. Enable Write Caching for Storage Devices
This option is usually the best choice to use for storage devices that must provide the highest possible performance, and that you intend to not remove from the system frequently, such as internal hard disk drives.
16. Move Page File to Separate Hard Disk
Moving the page file to a second physical hard drive instead of the same C: drive that Windows is on can help improve the performance of Windows if the other hard drive is at least as fast or faster than the Windows drive. Doing this allows Windows to use the page file on one drive while not having to interrupt reads or writes on the Windows drive. Be sure to let the page file be System Managed. Windows does a great job of keeping your page file in peak condition and performance.
17. Uninstall Unneeded Programs
Most OEM computers that you buy at a retail outlet have a ton of bloatware and trial software installed on it. Some of these can take up a lot of resources. Uninstall the programs that you do not use from Programs and Features.
18. Disable or Delete Unneeded Startup Items
Startup items are the programs, shortcuts, folders, drivers, etc... that are set to run automatically at startup when a user signs in to Windows 8. Disabling or deleting them from running at startup can improve startup time and reduce the amount of system resources being be used by them. It is also a good idea to check your startup items every once in awhile to help make sure that some unknown program or malware has not placed itself to run at the startup of Windows.
19. Set Unused Services to Manual or Disabled
Services use processes that run in the background using part of your computer's resources. Check through your services with the help of the guide provided in this link, and stop and set to manual the services that affects features that you do not use or need to gain a tiny bit more performance.

WARNING: Disabling the wrong service could hurt performance, or even cripple Windows. If you do not truly know what you are doing, then it's highly recommended to not do this.
20. Automatically Sign in to User Account at Startup
If you are the only one that uses your home PC, then you could set Windows to automatically sign in to your user account at startup to save you time from having to manually sign in.

You may also wish to do this:

• How to Turn On or Off Require Sign-in on Wakeup in Windows 10

WARNING: Doing this will also allow anyone with access to your PC to be automatically signed in to your user account if they startup Windows.
21. Disable or Uninstall Internet Explorer Add-ons and Toolbars
Disabling or uninstalling any unneeded installed add-ons in Internet Explorer will help the performance of Internet Explorer.
22. Disable First Sign-in Animation for New Users
While the first sign-in animation may be helpful to new users to see when they sign-in for the first time, disabling the first sign-in animation will give a faster new account preparation time.
23. Change Automatic Maintenance Settings and Time
Maintenance activity in Windows is designed to run in the background with limited user interaction and minimal impact to performance and energy efficiency. You should change the Automatic Maintenance to what time you want to run the daily maintenance tasks, and if to allow the scheduled maintenance to wake the computer to run at the scheduled time. It's best to set the time to when you will not be using the computer, but when the computer is still turned on or asleep if set to wake up.

You might also:

• Change "Optimize Drives" Schedule Settings
• Enable or Disable Automatic Updates in Windows Updates

24. Use Optimize Drives to TRIM SSDs and Defrag HDDs
By default, Optimize Drives runs automatic maintenance. However, you should check and optimize your drives at least once a week to keep them from being defragmented and performing well.
25. Speed Up the Menu Show Time
This reduce the amount of time it takes for a menu in Windows to pop, fade, or slide open when you run the mouse pointer over it.
26. Keep your Index Enabled and Updated, or Disable the Index
Your needs for the index, searches, and libraries will determine what will be best for you. The indexing service helps to make the search function in Windows 8 run much faster. However, it can also drain your computer’s hardware resources, particularly on older machines.

By default the index is enabled in Windows. If you do a lot of searches in specific locations or for specific file types, then searching using the index with these rebuilding the index will update the index for accurate search results afterwards.

If you like to only do non index searches to always have accurate search results, then you could either disable the index or set your Search options to not use the index when searching in file folders for system files. Non index searches will take a bit longer to give search results. If you disable the index, then this will help your hard drive not run as much while the index (if enabled) automatically updates itself in the background when your computer is idle. If you disable the index, you will also no longer be able to search within libraries.
27. Set "Turn off hard disk after" to Never or Increase Time
While having your HDDs turn off after set x amount of idle minutes can help save energy, it can also cause your PC to pause while waiting for the HDD to spin back up when needed. You could either set this to never turn off the HDDs, or increase the amount of idle minutes before turning off the HDDs to avoid it being turned off while you may still need it and have to wait for it to spin back up as often.
28. Clean Your PC
Keeping the fans and inside of your computer clean and dust free can help prevent performance issues. Dust acts as an insulator, making it harder for your hardware to dissipate the buildup of heat. When this problem becomes significant enough for your computer to overheat, certain components such as your processor or graphics card may temporarily throttle back their clock speeds in order to prevent damage to your hardware.
29. Set CPU Priority Level of a Process
By default, Windows shares the processor time between all running processes based upon their priority level. If a process has a higher priority, it gets more processor time compared to a process having a lower priority.

You could set priority of an application or process to run with a Realtime, High, Above Normal, Normal, Below Normal, or Low processor priority level. You could have a task from an application or process finish faster by giving it a higher priority level, or by setting a non urgent task to a lower priority level to allow other tasks to have more priority.
30. Change Maximum Download Connections per Server Limit in Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer has a limit for the amount of simultaneously downloads per website or server.

• Internet Explorer 7 and earlier versions limit the number of files that you can download at one time to two by default.
• Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9 limit the number of files that you can download at one time to six by default.
• Internet Explorer 10 and Internet Explorer 11 limit the number of files that you can download at one time to eight by default.

In addition, if you visit a website with lots of images (and supporting files like CSS styles and Javascript), then you could have a slower browsing experience. On average, your browser could have to make several requests to the site's server before it can finish loading the page. Requesting all the files needed to download with the default 8 (ex: IE11) at a time is going to be slower than requesting say 16 files at a time.

As internet connection speeds increase, the default number of simultaneous downloads to a single website or server may be to restrictive and not meet your needs.
31. Run Disk Cleanup to Free Hard Drive Space
Running Disk Cleanup every so often will help find and remove unnecessary files on your hard disk to free up disk space and help your computer run faster.
32. Change How Long Notifications Stay Open
This will let you change how long to show notifications above the taskbar notification area before they automatically close.
33. Turn On or Off Battery Saver
Windows 10 introduces a new battery saver feature that conserves your PC's battery by limiting background activity and adjusting hardware settings. Battery saver will turn on automatically if you like, but you can also turn it on manually. You can add or remove apps to an always allowed list to always run in the background, even when Batter Saver is on.
34. Enable TRIM Support for Solid State Drives
The TRIM command is essential to maintain the performance of solid state drives (SSDs) at an optimal level over the lifetime of the drive. It is recommended to verify and make sure TRIM support is enabled.
35. Check your Drives for Errors
Checking your drives for errors every once in a while can help fix some performance issues. Drive errors can usually be caused by bad sectors, improper shutdowns, bad software, corruption, physical damage, etc...
36. Disable Delay of Running Startup Items at Windows Startup
By default, Windows will run the items in your Startup folder (shell:startup) after about a 10 second delay at Windows startup when you sign-in to your account. This was done to help improve the performance of Windows startup. If you have a fast computer, then you may wish to disable this startup delay to have your startup items run as soon as you sign-in instead delayed.
37. Optimize Search Indexing Options
You can remove locations that don't matter to you for searching from the search index to help improve the speed of search results.
38. Allocate Processor Resources to Adjust for Best Performance of Programs or Background Services
Windows manages your processor resources automatically, and can allocate tasks between processors or manage multiple processes on a single processor. By default, Windows adjusts for best performance of programs over background services.

To optimize Windows to meet your requirements, you can adjust processor scheduling by choosing how to allocate processor resources so that it is optimized to run programs (foreground services) or background services (ex: printing or back ups) with more responsiveness.
39. Disable SuperFetch
SuperFetch keeps track of which applications you use most and loads this information from the hard drive into RAM so that programs load faster than they would if the hard disk had to be accessed every time. Windows SuperFetch prioritizes the programs you’re currently using over background tasks and adapts to the way you work by tracking the programs you use most often and pre-loading these into memory. With SuperFetch, background tasks still run when the computer is idle. However, when the background task is finished, SuperFetch repopulates system memory with the data you were working with before the background task ran. Now, when you return to your desk, your programs will continue to run as efficiently as they did before you left. It is even smart enough to know what day it is in the event you use different applications more often on certain days. Basically, SuperFetch attempts to predict which applications you will launch next and preloads all of the necessary data into memory.

Sometimes SuperFetch may cause high disk usage.

If you run Windows from a SSD or M.2 instead of a slow spinner hard drive, then you may not see any performance gain from SuperFetch.

If you like, you could disable SuperFetch to see if you have any performance gains with it enabled or disabled.
40. Turn Off Background Apps
In Windows 10, you can use apps that can continue to perform actions even when you are not actively in the app’s window. These are commonly called background apps.

You can choose which apps can run in the background. Turning off background apps you don't use can help conserve power (battery) and performance.

That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Free Up Drive Space in Windows 10
• How to Optimize Battery Life on Windows 10 PC

:)

 

Computer is running really weird and slow now since I uninstlled Halo 5

Hi,

To improve the performance of your Windows 10, please check this article: Optimize Windows for better performance.

Note: The troubleshooting steps are intended for Windows 7 but are also applicable for Windows 10.

Let us know how it goes.

 

FPS drop in games

Try optimizing your computer.

Follow these steps: Optimize Performance of Windows 10

Hope this helps!

 

Hello tfwul, *Smile

Yeah, usually #15 is automatically set properly, but it wouldn't hurt to double check.

I usually recommend to leave the page file set to be managed by the system for the best results. If one is tight on hard drive space, then they could set a lower custom size to help.

The hiberfil.sys file is best to leave set to default unless you are only using fast startup and not hibernate.

 

Thanks.
Wonder though if it makes sense to enable pagefile for all drives?
I am _not_ using Fast Startup. Have it all default, which probably is the safest way


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I've never seen a need to have more than one page file.

 

So If I have an SSD @ 500GB then it wouldn't do any good to move page file over to HHD 500GB correct?

 

Hello Casey, *Smile

Only if you were really low on free space for the SSD, but it wouldn't help performance since the HDD is slower than the SSD.

 

Ty Sir!

 

Really great tutorial Shawn "Brink". But, lets say I don't want to disable animations such as the fade of how the Start Menu opens. This also goes for other applications that fade out, up, in, or down.

 

Hello Jesse, *Smile

You don't have to. You can pick and choose the ones you want to do.

 

Guess that is more better then Askvg.com's link, gonna refer this to people of the community *Smile

 

Sumit Dhiman, I tried your link and that's the one I used. It was the easiest for me. I also tried some tips as what the forums said in this section.

 

Ok , better I ll refer both *Smile

 

Nice tutorial, really helped speed up my pc! Nice job Brink!