How to speed up a Windows PC, setting by setting

Windows accumulates. Software leaves background services behind, applications add themselves to startup without asking clearly, and defaults chosen for battery life quietly cap performance on a machine that has been plugged in for two years.

These are the settings worth changing, where to find them, and what each one actually does. Paths are for Windows 11; Windows 10 differs mostly in wording.

The two that matter most

Startup apps

Task Manager → Startup apps, or Settings → Apps → Startup.

Sort by startup impact. Every entry here holds memory from the moment you log in until you shut down, whether you use it that day or not. Disable chat clients, launchers, sync tools and updaters you recognise — they still open normally when you click them. Leave anything from your hardware vendor or Microsoft that you cannot identify; the gain is not worth breaking a trackpad driver.

Browser memory

Not a Windows setting, but on most machines the largest consumer on the list. A browser holding thirty tabs is thirty applications running at once, and the ones you have not looked at since last week cost exactly as much as the one you are reading.

Chrome can release a tab's memory while leaving the tab in place. Doing that to the heaviest few typically returns more than every other item on this page combined — how it works.

Windows settings worth changing

Power mode

Settings → System → Power & battery → Power mode.

On a desktop or a plugged-in laptop, set this to Best performance. The balanced default deliberately holds clock speeds back, which is correct on battery and pointless on mains.

Storage Sense

Settings → System → Storage.

Turn on Storage Sense to clear temporary files automatically, and use the breakdown on that page to find what is consuming the drive. You are aiming for at least 15% free. This replaces every third-party cleaner you have been offered.

Background app permissions

Settings → Apps → Installed apps, then the three-dot menu on an app → Advanced options → Background apps permissions.

Set apps you rarely use to Never. This stops them running when you have not opened them, which is different from disabling startup.

Visual effects

Settings → Accessibility → Visual effects, or search for “adjust the appearance and performance of Windows”.

Turning off animations and transparency helps noticeably on integrated graphics and older machines, and does almost nothing on a modern discrete GPU. Try it; keep it only if you feel the difference.

Sync clients

OneDrive, Dropbox and their equivalents read and write constantly. If a machine is slow specifically after login, pause syncing for ten minutes and see whether it changes. If it does, narrow which folders sync rather than disabling the client entirely.

Diagnose before spending

Task Manager → Performance is the page that tells you which upgrade is worth buying.

• Memory: if committed memory regularly exceeds what is installed, Windows is paging to disk and more RAM will transform the machine.
• Disk: sustained 100% active time during ordinary work points at a mechanical drive or a failing SSD. Replacing a spinning disk with an SSD is the biggest upgrade available to an older PC.
• CPU: if it is pinned with nothing running, find the process before you conclude the processor is too old.

Buying RAM for a disk problem is the most common expensive mistake in this category, and this page prevents it.

Commonly recommended, actually useless

• Registry cleaners. A large registry does not slow Windows down. The category exists to sell you something.
• Manual defragmentation. Windows handles this on a schedule, and it does not apply to SSDs.
• Driver updater tools. Windows Update and your hardware vendor's own utility cover this. Third-party updaters are a well-documented source of malware.
• Disabling the page file. This does not free memory, it removes the safety valve, and applications crash instead of slowing down.
• “RAM booster” apps. They force other applications to release cached memory, which those applications then immediately reload. Net effect is negative.

If it is still slow

Work through the four causes of a slow computer to identify which resource is actually short, or take the full checklist ordered by payoff. A Windows PC that boots from an SSD, has free disk space and is not swapping is a fast machine, more or less regardless of its age.