Is Windows 10 giving you trouble? Follow
these basic maintenance tasks to keep Windows 10 running smoothly.
#1 Disk Cleanup. One of the best utilities you can use to keep Windows 10 running smoothly is the
disk cleanup tool. In a search bar type in disk cleanup and you'll see it in the menu. Select that
and it comes up with the prompt for what drive you want to clean. Now normally you're going
to want the C drive which is your windows OS so hit OK there. It comes up with the
list of disk locations that you can clear including temporary files, your recycle bin,
and a number of other things. Take a look at the size and see which ones you want to clear out.
Before we hit OK we're going to also do this Clean Up System Files and it prompts again for the
Windows C drive. Hit OK there. Now this normally takes a few minutes, especially if you haven't run
the disk cleanup utility in a long time so give it plenty of time and it'll eventually come up with a
progress bar. It goes through and calculates how much disk space you're going to be able to free up
on your Windows C drive and it's added to the list some Windows OS related things like your previous
windows installation. This can be a rather large amount of disk space and so it's a good idea to
clean out your previous windows installation after you've done an upgrade. You don't need
the previous windows installation unless you're going to restore back to that previous version
and normally you don't need to do that. You can do a backup/restore point if you're concerned
about losing data. There's nothing in the previous windows installation that you need going forward.
So I'm going to select all the ones that I want and hit OK.
It's going to permanently delete these files so we'll click Delete Files to continue.
It warns you that you will no longer be able to restore the machine back to the previous version
of Windows because we've selected that box and that's okay so hit Yes and it works through the
various files and cleans them out. Again, this can take several minutes depending on the size of the
files that you're clearing. And it's complete. #2 System File Scan. The system file scan utility is
a tool that scans for corrupt files on your hard drive. Click on your Start menu, type in CMD,
right-click on the command prompt in the menu, and run it as Administrator. It may prompt you
to make changes. Hit Yes and in the command prompt type in SFC /scannow and hit Enter.
This process goes through a scan of your system to see if there's any corrupt files and if it finds
them it will automatically correct them at that moment. Otherwise it will complete with no errors.
Corrupt files can cause all kinds of problems with your Windows system so it's a good idea to run
this on occasion. #3 Windows Update. Another step that's required to keep windows running smooth
is to make sure you've installed all your Windows updates. Click on the Start menu, go to Settings,
click on Update and Security, and Check for Updates. If there's anything pending
here for installation make sure to complete that and reboot your computer. Any pending
updates can interfere with other software so it's important that you complete them
and if you can't get past the installation for some reason I do have a video that explains how
you get rid of windows stuck updates. I'll put a link in the description of this video.
#4 Microsoft Store Updates. The apps you include from your Microsoft store will also get updates.
If you type store in the search bar and choose Microsoft Store that brings you
to the app install for Microsoft. Click this menu right here and go to Downloads and Updates
and click the Get Updates. This will scan for any updates to those apps you have installed
and it will download any needed updates so make sure you update all your apps as well.
#5 Microsoft Store Reset. If you have any difficulty opening the Microsoft store or
if it's not installing apps correctly you can do a reset. Just click on the Start menu, type CMD,
right-click on the command prompt, and run it as Administrator. This brings you to the command
prompt. Here type in wsreset and hit Enter. It won't show anything while it's running but
it actually goes through and clears the cache for the Microsoft store. This will clean up any issues
and open the Microsoft store again. #6 Enable Storage Sense. Storage Sense is a
way to optimize your file storage. You can turn this on by going to the Start menu, Settings,
System, Storage. Turn this on if you want to enable the automatic storage sense optimization.
Click here and you can configure it. Check this box if you want to automatically clean
up temporary system files. Turn this on if you want your user content cleanup
and then you can set the storage sense to run on an automatic basis - only when you have
low free disk space or you can schedule it to happen every day, week, or month.
As part of this process you can delete files in your recycle bin on a schedule,
delete files in your download folder if they haven't been used over a certain period of time,
and you can set OneDrive as well. You can run storage sense manually too and it will do all
that cleanup for you automatically. It's also a good idea to take a look at this list of all the
disk space that's being used by apps, temporary files, and other functions. If you see a large
amount of data you can click on the individual ones and take a look and see what you have in
here. If you have a bunch of apps you don't need, remove them and free up that disk space.
So if you want to automate some of the cleanup processes make sure storage sense
is turned on and configured properly. #7 Clear Browser Cache. To keep your browsers running
smooth you can clear out the data history and cache files. Let's take a look at
Microsoft Edge. In the upper right corner select the ellipses menu, go to History,
Clear Browsing Data. Here you can select the time range you want to clear. I'm going to select All
Time and then you can choose from the different categories of data. Notice here the cached image
files are 326MB. Once you've made your selections choose Clear Now and it removes that data.
In Google Chrome come up here to the menu, go to More Tools, Clear Browsing Data,
and you'll see a similar menu to Microsoft Edge. You can select the time range and you can choose
which ones you want to clear. Select Clear Data and it frees up that disk space as well.
For Internet Explorer come up to the gear icon, go into Internet Options.
On the General tab click Delete and choose your options that you want here as well
and hit Delete. Then OK. That clears the cache out of Internet Explorer. You'll have options to clear
the cache on other browsers as well. #8 Optimize Drives. As you write and delete files from your
hard drives they can become fragmented. If you go into the Start menu into Settings, System Storage,
and you scroll down to the bottom there's an option here for optimized drives. This brings up a
list of the hard drives you have in your computer and shows the current status of fragmentation.
Solid state drives work a little bit different and they don't get fragmented but they
actually will do a trimming but if you have a large amount of fragmentation here you can run
the optimization to clean that up. So I'm going to click on the data drive D, choose Optimize,
and it runs through the process and defragments any fragmented data.
You can also change these settings so that it runs automatically on a regular scheduled basis.
#9 Outlook OST File. As you work with email in outlook it stores this data in
an offline storage file. You can access it by going to File, Account Settings,
Account Settings, and click on Data Files in the list. Here you'll have several different
accounts and you can go into each one and do a Compact Now to clean up the file size.
If you open the File Location it will show you the files that you have
and the amount of disk space they're using. You can see here this one's almost 1.2GB
In order to compact these files just click on one, go to Settings, Advanced,
Outlook Data File settings, and click Compact Now. That will compress that file. Some accounts
are real small and you can just double-click on them, go directly to the Compact Now, and hit OK.
Occasionally you'll have a problem where you cannot compact that file or the file
becomes corrupt so if you have difficulty with your OST file you may need to delete it from
that file location. I have another video to resolve offline OST file problems in outlook
and I'll put a link in the description of this video. #10 Flush DNS. The dDNS or domain name
system is how websites are linked to IP addresses and it stores that data in a local DNS cache.
Sometimes that cache can get corrupt and you may have difficulty accessing certain websites.
You can clear the DNS by going into the Start menu, typing in CMD, right-click on command
prompt, and run as Administrator and in the prompt type ipconfig/flushdns, and hit Enter. That will
clear the cache and should resolve any issues you have accessing websites. #11 Startup Programs.
Another task you should look at on occasion is the programs that start up when you boot your
computer. Come down to the time, right-click, and go to Task Manager. Click on Startup and take a
look through this list to see what things are loading when you boot your computer.
Pay particular attention to the Startup Impact for things that are High and if there's anything there
that you know you don't need go ahead and disable it by clicking on it and selecting the Disable
option. This will ensure that you don't have too many things loading when you start your computer.
#12 Security and Maintenance. If you go to the Search bar and type in security you can select
Security and Maintenance from the menu. Open that up and go into Maintenance and
you'll see here that it's set to do automatic maintenance on a scheduled basis every night.
You can change the settings here and select whatever time you want them to run. If your
computer is shut down the next time you boot your computer it will pick a time when your computer is
no longer in use to run the maintenance in the background. If it for some reason goes a long
period of time without running this you can select to run it manually. Just come into Maintenance and
start it. Maintenance is important because it runs Windows updates, does system diagnostics, and will
detect any problems that you may be experiencing with your Windows 10 pc. You can view the list
of problems by clicking here and you can select one and go into the details to see what might
be causing those problems but Windows will correct them on its own if you have that set to automatic.
#13 Clear Location History. If you go to the Start menu, Settings, Privacy, and select Location
you can see that the Windows 10 pc tracks your location information for different apps.
It's set by default to allow access to your location and a list of apps is available where
you can turn on and off the location tracking individually. If you go down to the very bottom
there is a location history. Check this to clear that history and close the window and
that gets rid of the cached data files for your location history. #14 Remove Programs.
Another helpful tip is to get rid of any unnecessary programs installed in your system.
Click on Start, go to Settings, into Apps, and take a look at this list of apps installed. If you
see anything that you don't need click on it and uninstall it. In particular, look for spam tools
like search engine optimization or other bloatware applications. Those sometimes get installed when
you do other software installations. If you find one you don't want click on it, do Uninstall,
and that will remove it from your system. #15 Shutdown Often. Never underestimate the importance
of shutting your computer down frequently. Having worked in an office supporting hundreds of
computers it was clear that users who shut down their computer every day had far less issues.
"Hello. Have you tried turning it off and on again?" Memory leaks, Windows updates,
power outages, and errant software problems can affect your computer and a simple shutdown or
reboot can solve them. So there's 15 Windows 10 Maintenance tips. If you have others I didn't
mention please list them in the comments below the video. Thanks for watching. Hey,
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