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How to Speed Up Windows
Did you know that Windows includes a built-in performance monitoring application? Simply hit the "Start" button, type in "performance", and then choose the "Performance Monitor" app that shows up at the top of the list. This useful piece of software allows you to see your PC's performance in real time, or evaluate it by exploring the comprehensive log files.
Open the application, and then you will be able to evaluate the performance of the RAM memory, network interface, hard drives, CPU and more. Here are a few tips that will help boost the speed of your favorite operating system.
Begin by deleting all the unused applications. Windows does a great job telling you the various dates when you've installed the apps in your PC. Open the "Add or remove programs" settings section, and then examine all the applications, one at a time. If you can't even remember what a particular program is doing, it's time to eliminate it for good.
Restart your computer regularly; it is one of the easiest ways to increase performance. As you use your PC, its memory gets filled with useless data chunks, while various processes and services which have been started by previously opened applications continue to run, wasting CPU and RAM resources.
To verify this, bring on the "Task Manager", click its "Performance" tab, and then write down (or memorize) the amount of used random-access memory. Start your Internet browser, open a few tabs, and then shut it down; you will discover that the amount of used RAM has increased by a few hundreds of MBs, even though the browser window has been closed. I think that the conclusion is simple: if you've been using your computer for a few hours, browsing the web, playing some games, doing some video/photo/audio editing work, and so on, you should pause whatever you're doing for two minutes and restart your PC.
Get rid of all the bells and whistles; those fancy transparency effects and nice-looking window borders have the potential to make the OS more likeable to some people, but prevent us from squeezing the best performance out of our computers. Go for the bare bones; click "Start", type "performance", and then choose "Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows" from the displayed list. Click the "Adjust for best performance" radio button, choose "Apply", and then "OK"; the OS should become more responsive right away.
Many software manufacturers create applications which want to run at startup, even when they don't actually need to do that. To see them all, click Windows' "Start" button, type "startup", and then hit the "Enter" key. Your computer will display the "Startup Apps" list, which includes all the applications that run every time you power on your computer, using precious resources. Each program can have a "low", "medium" or "high" impact on your PC's computing resources, and you can easily toggle the on/off switch which will activate/deactivate each startup module. While it makes sense to keep a calendar app running every time you start the computer, online games and applications such as "Microsoft OneDrive Setup" shouldn't be allowed to slow down your PC.
If you've got plenty of RAM (at least 8 GB for computers running Windows 10) you should reduce the size of your computer's virtual memory. As you probably know, all the applications are loaded into your computer's random-access memory at runtime. When the RAM gets filled completely, the OS starts to load the new apps and processes into the virtual memory, which uses an area from your hard drive, so it is much slower in comparison with "real" memory. So, if your computer has 16 GB of RAM or more, and you aren't using that PC for huge video editing tasks, you can safely reduce (and often even eliminate) the virtual memory file by accessing Windows' "System", "Advanced system settings", "Performance", "Advanced", "Virtual Memory".
