How to speed up your Windows

[Julio.]

Looking through this, the main post doesn't seem too useful, but TheRock's recommendations are much more effective. Another thing worth adding is malware. running a scan with Malwarebytes Anti-malware is worth doing every so often as if you're infected it can cause performance issues.

[Huntsman]

Step 1: stop using that resource hogging relic called Windows 7 and get Windows 10 or atleast 8.

[Link9rly]

Step 1: stop using that resource hogging relic called Windows 7 and get Windows 10 or atleast 8.

and as @TheRock said, enable "High Performance" power plan as most people will overlook this. Don't forget to disable system sounds, especially the startup sound as this causes the boot sequence to take longer. Disabling some visual effects in "Advanced system settings" can greatly help in certain occasions. "Animate windows when minimising and maximising" causes audio hiccups under load. More experienced users can look into disabling certain services as explained here. If you have an additional drive, you should move the pagefile to that drive if you don't use it frequently.

[TheRock]

From personal experience, disabling sound didn't make things go any faster. I'll be short on a quick guide to speed up performance + boot speed.

Windows XP-Vista-7

First of all, to achieve this you need to clean services from start-up, or programs.

1) Press Windows + R > type "msconfig" (without quotes ofcourse), navigate to tab Startup and disable anything non related to drivers. (Ex; Do not disable Nvidia-AMD, intel, ctfmon, sound)
Pictures from Google:
Step 1:

Step 2:


2) Delaying Services on startup (For more advanced users) - You can google this one, and I do not recommend it. Can cause loads of BSOD if you just stop wrong services.
3) Clean disk cache - Defragmentation - Clean Windows Update

Step 1:
My Computer>Local Disk (Often C:) > Right Click > Properties

After loading for a bit.. you will see this:

Make sure to click on all of these. After finishing, repeat the process but this time press Clean Up System Files
Warning: For those who have formatted over an old Windows installation, be careful to not click to erase old windows installation if you wish to keep your files. Otherwise it will wipe C:/WindowsOld

Step 2:
My Computer> Local Disk (Often C: unless changed driver letter) > Right Click on that and hit properties. Navigate the tabs:

Click on C and either Analyze or Defrag disk


Step 3:
Delete all folders - C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download


Step 4: BIOS Boot order..

For those with Windows 8-8.1-10, with SSD yet still slow boot, you can do the same as first step (Task Manager > Startup)
And make sure to check if your BIOS-UEFI supports fast boot, or skipping tests or partial-full initialization of USB peripherals, Sata Ports, Secure Boot.. Turbo Boot etc.. For more advanced users: See if your Windows boots via UEFI or Legacy(BIOS) mode..

[Link9rly]

The startup sound trick is a bit old by now and with an SSD, there's no discernable difference. Still something I'd suggest doing just in case. The startup sound is annoying anyways.

On the startup thing for 8.1+, it'll actually tell you how much of an impact it makes on your startup time. I'd also suggest enabling Fast Startup unless specified not to. (i.e. using an SSD). There's a tutorial here on how to force it on if it's not enabled. There's one for 8.1 here.

As for defragmenting, 8.1+ do that automatically when it's left idling. You can force start it if necessary by following the same steps. I would, however, suggest turning off indexing for people with an SSD or people with a really old CPU. It just puts additional strain for a tiny benefit. If you know where your files are, you're good without it. You can still search but it'll just be a bit slower.

[TheRock]

Windows does not defrag SSDs anyway because it's pointless.. Indexing is good, and sometimes pain in the ass if disabled and you are looking for a file..

[Julio.]

Also defragmenting an SSD will reduce it's life due to the large number of disk writes. Once an SSD has written it's total capacity to disk it slows down. Not even TRIM works forever.

[Janar]

SSDs can not be defragmented. The process is called optimization, where TRIM is used. From my experience, it did not bring any noticeable improvement, but most likely as this optimization is done in the background.

[Julio.]

Yep, one of the key components of TRIM is balancing the disk writes across the entire available space. Data isn't written in the first available space like on a HDD, it will actually prioritise writing information to every other available location in the memory before repeating a write on a previously used location.

[TheRock]

My very first video is now uploaded.

Covering:

How to check PC specs + Windows version
How to recognize + download missing driver
How to check your HDD Health
How to clean your HDD + Defrag
AntiVirus
How to clean your PC from Malwares-Browser Hijacks

More will come soon.

[Endri]

My very first video is now uploaded.

Covering:

How to check PC specs + Windows version
How to recognize + download missing driver
How to check your HDD Health
How to clean your HDD + Defrag
AntiVirus
How to clean your PC from Malwares-Browser Hijacks

More will come soon.

This is awesome , it works , Thank you!