If you notice slow loading of a solid state drive (SSD) on your Windows 10 computer, you are probably wondering where something went wrong. Solid state drives are known for their faster boot times and faster performance than regular hard drives, so when things start to slow down, something might need to be fixed.
In this guide, I’ll list a number of potential fixes to explain why your SSD may slow down on boot. These issues should reduce load times, and in some cases, they can also improve overall performance.
Since it can be difficult to pinpoint the problem, we will offer our advice in a simple order, from the simplest to the most difficult. Hopefully your SSD will be up and running at full speed in no time.
Slowing down SSDs completely – freeing up space to improve performance
Full SSDs are slowing down – Free up space to improve performance
The less space your SSD has, the slower it will run. However, things are not as bad as you might think these days. Older SSD technology had this problem, so if you don’t have an older SSD – we’re talking 2010 – this won’t be a problem.
However, if your SSD’s capacity is 90% or higher, you may notice some performance issues. At this point, you should free up some space.
If you’re using less storage capacity, it can be tricky to maintain your SSD. The best solution is to frequently offload most of your data to a 1TB hard drive. They are very economical and still offer reasonable speeds for basic performance. If you don’t have a spare hard drive on hand, in the meantime, emptying 10% of the storage capacity is sufficient.
– /
You can check the amount of memory by pressing the Windows key, typing “PC” and clicking “This PC”.
Enter High Performance Mode – Notebook
Change to High Performance Mode – for laptops
Here’s a quick possible solution. To enter high performance mode, follow these steps.
Click the “Battery” button in the lower right corner of the screen.
Drag the slider to Best Performance on the right side.
- Then press the Windows key, type Power & Sleep in the Windows search menu.
- Click Power & Sleep Settings.
- Click Additional Power Settings.
- On a new tab, click New Power Plan on the left.
- Select “High Performance” and click “Next”. Select your sleep settings and click Create.
Reduce the number of applications you start
Minimize startup applications
If you reduce the number of applications that run when your computer boots, your computer’s boot time will improve. Despite the fact that solid state drives can read and write data faster, dozens of running applications still slow down load times.
To reduce the number of applications launched on first boot, follow these steps.
- Press the Windows key.
- Enter Startup and click Startup tasks.
- Go through the list and disable unnecessary applications at startup.
- Bonus tip: disable as many high-performance applications as possible.
Virus check
Check for viruses
If viruses or malware are running in the background, the system resources used may be excessive. Run a virus scan or follow this guide to completely remove all existing malware on your computer with free tools.
Disable ultra-low power consumption
Disable ultra-low power states
Ultra-low power states, or ULPS for short, is a power saving mode that can affect your performance and boot times. This is a feature of AMD graphics cards in Crossfire that can sometimes cause slow loading.
Please note, if you are using NVIDIA or one AMD graphics card, this will not cause you problems.
I’ll explain how this can be disabled below. Please follow the instructions carefully.
- Press Windows Key + R to open the Run window.
- Type Regedit and press Enter.
- Click Yes if prompted.
- Press Ctrl + F to open the search box.
- Enter EnableULPS and click Find.
It may take a while to find the EnableULPS registry key. When it appears, double click on the EnableULPS value and change it from 1 to 0.
Summary
Summary
This summarizes our view on how to fix slow boot SSDs in Windows 10. This is usually a software issue like one of the above.
However, in some cases, this may be due to a hardware failure. Why not take a look at this list of free hardware diagnostic tools to track down hardware errors?
–