Welcome back, in today’s video I’ll be showing you a number of ways to speed up your
Windows 11 PC or laptop.
Hopefully the methods in this video will help give you a performance boost that will be
noticeable when starting up your PC, when running demanding programs like games and
in general when in Windows 11.
You don’t necessarily need to follow all of the methods, so feel free to skip any that
you don’t think will work or that you have tried already.
Some of the methods might not work on your device or make any difference, but as we’ll
have ten in total to try, you should still be able to speed up your PC.
Remember to leave a like and feel free to subscribe if the video helps, let’s get
into the methods.
The first method to speed up your Windows 11 PC is to disable start up applications.
These apps will run automatically when you start your PC and as well as making your PC
start slower, some might run in the background and slow it down further.
To disable start-up applications in Windows, the first thing we need to do is go to the
task manager.
You can access the task manager by right clicking on the start menu icon at the bottom of your
screen and then by choosing task manager from the list.
You can alternatively search for it too.
Click on more details if you don’t see anything.
Now find the tab called start up, it should be the fourth option and click on it to show
the list of all of the applications that can start up when you turn on your PC.
You’ll need to go down the list and look for any programs you know you don’t use,
or those that you don’t use regularly.
Disabling them in here won’t make them stop working, however they might take a bit longer
to run when you want to use them.
But of course, if you don’t use them that often, this won’t make too much difference.
To disable an application in here, all you need to do is right click on it and then choose
‘disable’.
It’s helpful to look at the start up impact column to help make your decision on whether
it’s worth disabling them.
You can always enable the program again by right clicking on it and selecting enable.
The next method is to free up space on your device.
Check out my channel as I’ll have videos that cover many different ways to free up
space in Windows but there is a chance freeing up space can improve performance, especially
if you are near the capacity of your drive.
A few quick ways to free up space would be to empty the recycle bin, which can be done
by right clicking on it.
You could sort through your downloads folder, or uninstall a program you are no longer using.
You can uninstall a program by going to settings, then apps, then apps and features and then
finding the app you want to uninstall and then finally click on the three dots icon
and choose uninstall.
The third method to speed up your PC or laptop is to change some of the animation and visual
settings.
Changing these won’t make a massive difference, but you should notice some improvement, especially
on older and slower machines.
To change the animation settings, search “advanced system settings” in the search bar and click
on view advanced system settings.
In the new window, click on settings in the performance section, it should be the top
settings option.
This will bring up the performance options window, and in here you can quickly select
adjust for best performance to help speed up your PC or you can have a look at the individual
options to create a custom plan.
The fewer boxes you select, the faster your PC will be, but you will obviously lose some
of the animations.
Feel free to play around with each of the options to find out what you prefer and what
suits your PC.
Let’s move onto the next method.
The next method is to disable search indexing.
Search indexing is something that will occur in the background when you are using your
PC as it indexes new and updated documents and files.
Turning it off will cause searching to take a little longer, but without it running in
the background there should be a slight performance improvement.
It is up to you and it is worth trying to see if it benefits you, and if you don’t
notice the difference in the time it takes to search, then it might be worth leaving
it off.
It might be best to only do this on very old and slow devices.
What we can do though is turn off search indexing for specific folders, so if you always search
for things in your documents, you can leave it on for that folder but turn it off for
others.
To turn off search indexing for some of the locations on our PC, type indexing options
into the search bar and click on it to open the indexing options window.
You’ll now see all the indexed locations, click on modify to change the settings by
checking or unchecking the boxes.
Up next, we’re going to scan our PC for any malware and viruses.
You can use your own anti-virus software to do this if you have it, but if you don’t
have any, we can use Windows’ built-in software.
To scan for viruses, search Windows security in the search bar and then when the window
opens, choose virus and threat protection from the options on the left.
In here, you can choose quick scan or if you go to scan options, you can click on full
scan and then scan now to search for viruses.
Allow Windows to perform the scan and then we can move on to the next tip.
The next way we can speed up our PC is by changing the power settings on it.
You may be able to increase performance by changing the power plan but remember that
you might not be able to do this on all devices.
To edit these settings, first go to the control panel.
You can get there by searching for it in the search bar.
In the control panel, go to system and security and then find power options from the list.
If you haven’t already, you might find that turning on high performance will help speed
up your PC, but you will increase power consumption, so if you are using a laptop, this will shorten
the battery life.
Whilst you’re in these settings, click on where it says “choose what the power buttons
do” from the options on the left and then click “change settings that are currently
unavailable” in blue.
Make sure “turn on fast start-up” is selected.
If it is already, then you don’t need to change anything.
These power settings changes could improve PC performance.
The seventh method will focus specifically on the browser you use.
This might not apply to all of you but if you have any browser add ins, then removing
them will help speed up your browser experience.
Remove the ones you don’t use.
The method to remove them might be slightly different on each browser, but on Chrome for
example, all you need to do is right click on the one you want to remove and then choose
“remove from Chrome”.
Next, it’s worth checking for any Windows updates.
Older versions of Windows 11 might have compatibility problems or newer versions could have performance
upgrades.
To update your PC to the latest version of Windows 11, first go to the main settings
page.
You can get here by searching for it.
In the settings, click on Windows update from the options on the left side.
In here, simply click on check for updates and install any that appear.
Remember to save any work before updating.
The ninth method is to close any programs that are running in the background or close
apps that you aren’t using.
To do this, go back to the task manager that we accessed earlier.
In here, it might be good to look for apps that are using a lot of resources such as
CPU or memory and close these when you aren’t using them.
Don’t end the task though for any programs you don’t recognise as they might be system
services.
The final method is to focus on the physical elements of your PC or laptop.
This can be anything from ensuring your PC is running cool by cleaning dust and ensuring
the fans aren’t covered or it could be by improving the hardware such as upgrading to
an SSD from a hard drive.
And so those are my methods to help speed up your Windows 11 PC or laptop.
Click the card onscreen now to watch a video of mine showing you ways to improve the sound
quality on your PC.
Help support the channel by visiting the store – the link is in the description and at
the end of the video.
If you have any questions, then let me know in the comments below and if you did find
today’s video helpful remember to leave a like and feel free to subscribe for more
tips in the future.
Be sure to stick around to see some of my other videos that you might be interested
in.
Thanks so much for watching and I will see you in another video!