Ten FREE ways to make Windows as fast as possible

Your PC gets slower as it ages. Windows isn’t always to blame, but as the interface between your hardware and your apps, and the largest piece of software running on your machine, you can be excused for making it the focus of your frustration.

So it seems only fair that we give Windows the best chance we can of performing well. We’ve compiled the ten most effective changes you can make to help Windows keep running as fast as your PC will take it.

We’re not going to recommend installing more memory and swapping in an SSD: as a PC Pro reader, you’ll have considered these already. Instead, we’ll focus on settings and options, all of which you can implement for free.

1 Slim things down

We’ll start with everyone’s favourite piece of advice: don’t start up any applications or processes you don’t need. Windows 10 generally launches quickly but, over time, the more applications you install, the more processes will be added to its startup payload. So, while the OS itself might still be running quickly, it will have to perform a lot of additional background tasks before it can hand over control of your PC’s resources to you. Your first couple of minutes might feel sluggish and, if any of those processes are the start of an ongoing cycle, checking and updating things in