How To Make Windows 10 Faster in 9 Simple Steps.
Windows is undoubtedly a popular desktop operating system. But the popular OS has its own problems. Due to the variety of hardware and the large number of built-in features, Windows has never been as stable as macOS. Additionally, there are unnecessary background services that cannot be disabled. All this leads to inefficient system performance, which is why you can find so many articles on the Internet that say “How to make Windows 10 faster.” Well, I’m not going to talk about disk fragmentation, using Pen Drive as RAM, uninstalling applications, and all these tricks.
We’re going to talk about some major software changes and hardware upgrades in Windows. So here are 9 tips to speed up Windows 10.
How to make Windows 10 faster
1. Turn off Cortana
I don’t really like it when companies start to impose their services on you. There’s no problem with Cortana, but it’s unfair when you don’t have a choice to turn her off. With Cortana enabled, you have persistent services running in the background. Not only that, it affects search results. For example, I wanted to find an app called “iSpring Free Cam”. Below is what the search results look like with Cortana after you turn off Cortana.
Windows now won’t let you turn off Cortana after a recent update. But you can still do this by editing the registry entries. But before you do that, I recommend that you make a backup first. In case you have a problem, you can always go back to the previous backup point. Now, to edit the registry entries, go to the Run menu and type “regedit.exe”.
Alternatively, you can also enter Registry Editor in the Start Menu and click it to open the Registry Key menu.
In the registry editor menu, go to the following path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Policies Microsoft Windows
We need to create a folder for Windows. To do this, right-click Windows, select New, and press Key. Name the key “Windows Search”.
Now, in the Windows Search folder, create a D-Word entry. Name it “Allow Cortana” and set the value to 0. Then click “OK” and restart Windows.
If you are too lazy to do all this, here is the link to the zip folder, which contains 2 registry entries: Allow Cortana and Disable Cortana. Just double-click Disable Cortana and she does all the work for you. Restart your computer once and post that you should have Cortana disabled. The search bar for Cortana will now be invisible, and web search results and suggestions will also be disabled during searches.
2. Disable the original indexing
After you’ve turned Cortana off, let’s go to Windows Search. This is not the best option. In addition, search services are constantly running in the background. It searches for emails, indexes files and other content. This consumes a lot of resources in the background and slows down startup times even more.
So, if Windows native search isn’t faster, why not just turn it off and save resources. To do this, we need to remove entries from the indexing list. Go to Windows search one last time and look for indexing options.
Read: How to Change Key Features in Windows 10/8/7
In the Indexing Options menu, we need to delete all entries. To do this, click the “Change” button.
Now, under the Edit Indexed Locations menu, uncheck all of the selected locations. You can leave Program Files if you like, because it’s a habit to go to the Start menu to open applications. This will remove the folders from indexing. If you can’t find the folders, click on Folders under the Summary of Selected Locations section below and it will redirect you to the location under Change Selected Locations. After you have unchecked all the checkboxes, click OK to save your changes.
After you save your changes, the selected folder appears in the Indexing Options menu. Close the window and now Windows Search will not index files. But it is still running in the background, you can stop it completely from Services.msc by disabling the Windows Search service.
Right-click on Windows Search Service and select Properties. In the Properties window, select Startup Time as Disabled.
Now that you’ve disabled native indexing in Windows, it’s time to switch to the more user-friendly Windows search application called Everything.
All is a popular Windows utility that replaces Windows’ native search. Compare to Windows Search: Everything is much faster and allows you to perform all the functions that you can use in Windows Search.
3. Start-up impact analysis
Most Windows systems take a long time to boot. The factor that has a direct impact is the startup programs. Unlike most people, I would not recommend that you disable all startup programs. T hat is naive! I recommend that you check the launch impact and disable higher impact applications. To do this, open the task manager. You can right-click on the taskbar and select Task Manager. Alternatively, you can also press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to launch the Task Manager.
In Task Manager, go to the Startup tab. On the Startup tab, you will see the startup programs and their corresponding Startup Impact. If you see that the impact of any program is not being measured, reboot the system once and it should be measured. Now, if the startup impact is large, then the program consumes more time and resources during startup. We need to disable these programs, and for that click, select the program and click the “Disable” button in the lower right corner.
Post this, you will see a significant improvement in response time after Windows starts.
4. Best performance setting
Now these are some drastic measures. If your system is too slow and unstable with graphics, I would recommend switching to better performance mode. However, this will reduce some of the animation and graphics options. To switch to better performance mode, go to the start menu and type “customize appearance”. You will see a pop-up window titled “Customize the look and feel of Windows”, click on it.
Read: Unlock Windows with Android Fingerprint with this New App
Now, in the Performance Options window, select Tune for Better Performance. By default, Customize for Best Appearance is selected. Once you have selected the Adjust for Best Performance option, you will see animation and graphics options that will be disabled in the next section. In case you need specific graphics, such as “Show thumbnails instead of icons”, you can check it and enable graphics. Click OK to check in your changes.
After you enable Better Performance Mode, you will see several graphical changes. Notable ones will be icons instead of thumbnails, no shadow under the window and mouse pointer, etc. The difference in graphics in this mode is huge, but it speeds up its own explorer, and also reduces the load on graphics rendering.
5. Battery settings
Windows starts the system by default with mediocre settings to conserve battery power. Setting the maximum value may drain the battery faster. But it does improve the performance of your system. To quickly switch between battery modes, click the battery icon in the lower-right corner of the taskbar. The Battery Optimization menu will open, with the default set to Best Performance. Drag the slider all the way to the right to set it to Best Performance.
6. Turn off Windows Defender
Windows Defender is built into Windows 10. It runs several services in the background to keep your system safe from malware and viruses. Recently, Windows Defender also introduced a sandboxing feature that ensures that a virus-infected application doesn’t damage other files. Windows Defender is a good built-in service, but if it harms your system or annoys you with frequent notifications, you can turn it off.
However, like Cortana, there is no direct way to do this, and you need to edit the registry keys. But before you do that, I recommend that you make a backup first. In case you have a problem, you can always go back to the previous backup point. Now, to edit the registry entries, go to the Run menu and type “regedit.exe”.
Alternatively, you can also enter Registry Editor in the Start Menu and click it to open the Registry Key menu.
In the registry editor menu, go to the following path “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Policies Microsoft Windows Defender”
You will already find a file named Default. Now, to disable Windows Defender, we need to create a new D-Word file. To do this, right-click the empty space on the right and choose New. In the New section, click D-WORD Value (32-bit).
Name the key “DisableAntiSpyware”. Change the value to 1 by double-clicking the key. Then click OK.
Restart your computer for the changes to take effect. After restarting, Windows Defender services should not work.
Note. This can leave your computer vulnerable to viruses and malware on the Internet or through removable devices
7. Turn off Onedrive Sync
Microsoft added One Drive Sync to Windows 10, which automatically backs up your data. But he is constantly trying to sync files from Windows to the cloud, which takes a lot of resources. In my case, I’m using Google Drive, so I don’t need to sync with one drive. Hence, I turned it off. To do this, click the One Drive icon in the lower right corner of the taskbar.
From the One Drive menu, click the More button in the lower right corner. first In the advanced menu, click on “Settings”.
In the Microsoft One Drive settings menu, go to the Account tab. In the One Drive Storage section, you will see the Unlink this computer hyperlink. Click on it and it will permanently pause all syncs from your system.
Synchronization is now stopped, but One Drive will still work every time the system is restarted. To turn this off, go to the Settings tab and uncheck the first option under General. Then click OK to check in the changes.
8. UnderVolting
You may already know about OverClocking. But Overclocking is not always supported by all BIOSes, and there are several implications to consider. So here’s another concept called undervoltage. Before we start with undervoltage, we need to understand what it really is. CPU and GPU often get a little overvoltage that they don’t really need. This additional voltage now generates thermal energy, which causes thermal throttling. Simply put, when your processor heats up to its maximum temperature, it tries to return to normal temperature by shedding the load.
So, if your computer gets very hot while doing normal tasks, you should try to lower the voltage. To reduce stress, you can use the Intel XTU application for Intel processors. If you are using an AMD processor, you can use a third party application called Throttlestop. I am using Intel i5-7200U so I am using Intel XTU app.
To lower the voltage on your processor, open the XTU app and go to the Core section.
Now you can reduce the amount of voltage applied to your processor. To reduce stress, we must move to the negative side. Please be careful when doing this and make sure you don’t go over to the positive side as this can lead to overvoltage. Overvoltage leads to more voltage being applied and therefore to frequent heating of your PC. In my case, this is an Intel i5-7200U processor, so I reduced it to -0.1 V. You can google the CPU undervoltage limit or just try to decrease it in stages and see where your computer freezes. The previous stress point should be the golden mean. If at any stage your system freezes, just restart your computer and it will reset the undervoltage limit.
You can stress test the application and see the difference before and after. I have a temperature difference after undervoltage of almost 10 degrees. This not only prevents the temperature from dropping, but also extends the life of your processor.
But don’t overdo it, and I wouldn’t recommend doing this for your GPU. Undervoltage is less difficult than overclocking, but provides long-term benefits.
9. Hardware
So this is the maximum performance gain you can achieve in SW. After all, there is no alternative to good hardware. You can start by increasing the amount of RAM. People don’t realize how dramatic the changes are in RAM. This allows for maximum processor utilization.
Now I went to Amazon and bought myself a mission critical 8GB RAM clocked at 2400MHz. I would not recommend a higher clock speed RAM. Due to the fact that the maximum processor frequency is 2133 MHz. If your processor supports higher frequency RAM, buy a 3000 MHz processor.
After switching the RAM, you can see the benchmark results with 8GB of RAM and 12GB of RAM. It really matters a lot.
If you have an extra SSD slot on your PC, buy an SSD. An SSD dramatically improves the overall performance of your PC. They are now cheaper, and remember that internal SSDs are cheaper than external SSDs. You can get an internal 2.5-7mm or M.2 SSD depending on your PC’s connectors. You can easily google the specs of your laptop on the Internet. Once you have an SSD, switch your program files and OS to the SSD using MiniTool Partition Wizard. The tool allows you to clone the C drive to an SSD so that you can boot from the SSD side.
Read: How to transfer your Windows 10 license to a new computer, hard drive or SSD
Packaging
So these were some of the ways to dramatically improve Windows performance. If you want to disable all Windows activities including Windows Defender, Firewall, Update Services, and more, you can use this GitHub script. However, I would recommend that you read the Manual and understand which services you disable.
Let me know in the comments below if you get stuck at any stage or have additional Windows questions.
Also Read: Best Windows Utilities You Should Be Using in 2019.