It happens to everyone.
You buy a brand new computer, and the first time you boot it up you're AMAZED at how fast
it is.
But then... a couple years or even months go by, and before you know it, the computer
struggles to run even basic programs.
What happened?
Well there are a lot of reasons why a computer might slow down over time, but I've got a
list of ten things you can do in Windows that will hopefully get it running more like when
you first bought it.
And don't worry, these are are all simple and free things you can do right now.
Some of these might seem obvious, but others may not.
So let's go.
First and foremost, clear out your startup programs AND services.
This has got to be the number one reason for slow downs over time, because think about
it.
As time goes on and you install new programs, many of them make themselves start up with
windows.
And if you don't close them, you'll have an ever-increasing number of programs just running
in the background taking up resources.
But don't think that just because you don't see many programs in the taskbar that there
aren't many programs running in the background.
In Windows 8 and 10, you can open up the task manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc, and
going to the Startup tab to see ALL the programs that start up with windows.
In Windows 7 and earlier, go to the start menu and run "msconfig" Right click and disable
any that you don't immediately need all the time.
You can obviously just manually run them whenever you want, but they don't need to start up.
Now here's where most people screw up.
Because the startup tab is not the end of the story.
Because many programs install what are called "services", which are still programs that
run in the background, but you never see them.
So number two is to go through these startup services and disable any of those you don't
need as well.
You can do this by going to the start menu and running "Services.msc".
You'll get a list of all the services, and any that say "automatic" will start with Windows.
What you can do is right click them, and change startup type to "manual", so they'll only
run when the program starts.
Keep in mind that you SHOULD be more cautious when disabling these, especially for programs
that aren't necessarily manually run by you.
So for example disabling the printer service might cause trouble next time you go to print.
So only disable services that you know you don't need running in the background.
This is also great for programs that you see starting up all the time, but you can't find
it in the startup list.
It's probably actually a service.
Now quickly, kind of as a number "2.5", this is pretty common sense and goes off one and
two, but uninstall any unused programs.
This will free up hard drive space, and remove startup junk without having to go through
the whole list of startup programs and services trying to figure out what each one does.
Alright number three, another simple one you're hopefully already doing, is scanning for malware
and viruses.
If your computer is always running slow for no apparent reason, it's possible there are
hidden malicious software running in the background, doing anything from showing you ads to using
your computer resources in a bot net.
Now there are both free and paid antivirus options, and free versions of paid ones.
These include Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, and Malwarebytes.
For paid programs, I personally use Eset Smart Security, and I've been happy with it.
Even if your computer isn't running slow though, you should have some sort of antivirus on
your computer, for reasons I've covered in plenty of
other videos.
Ok number four is quick and easy, and that's disabling windows animations.
One of the ways you can do this is to go to the Ease of Access settings window, and check
"Turn off all unecessary animations when possible".
You can also to Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Performance Settings, and
adjust which animations to use.
You can select for best performance which will disable all of them, or pick and choose.
This will probably make the biggest difference on low power computers.
Next, number five is keep all your software up to date.
This includes Windows itself, your graphics drivers, and anything else you use regularly.
They are frequently releasing new updates that optimize for performance, as well as
improve security.
Plus, it's just good practice.
Number six.
Check your power settings!
Especially on laptops, the default may be to have it set to "balanced" or even "power
saver", which are good for conserving battery, but will also slow down your computer considerably.
Instead, you may want to change it to High Performance, definitely if you're on a desktop,
and on a laptop maybe only when you're plugged in.
I learned this the hard way a couple years back when I got a brand new laptop that was
supposed to be really high end.
But when I got it, it was SO slow, I couldn't figure out why.
After several days, I finally realized it was on power saver mode, and when I switched
it to high performance, THEN it was lightning fast.
So be sure to check that.
Ok now we're going to get slightly more technical but don't worry.
So number seven is check your hard disk for errors.
You can do this in a couple ways.
First, you can check the hard drive's reported health by going to the command prompt, so
start menu, type CMD.
Then typing in "WMIC", and then "diskdrive get status".
If they all say OK, one for each drive, it means that there are no immediate serious
errors that it thinks at least.
If it says something other than OK, then one of your drives could be having issues and
you should REPLACE IT.
The other way to check for drive errors is to go to command prompt and run the Check
Disk command, by typing "CHKDSK /f", which will search for and try to repair errors on
your drive.
If you consistently get a lot of errors, again that may mean your drive is failing.
This is why you always want to back up.
ALWAYS!
Number eight.
Check the Windows File Integrity.
Back at the good old command prompt, type in "SFC /scannow" to run the system file checker,
and it will try and find any system files that are missing or corrupted and try to repair
them.
Now there are a ton of possibilities for error messages it could spit back at you, so if
you get one, you'll just have to Google it yourself ok?
I am not going to help everyone with every random error they get, because I wouldn't
know what they are without looking them up either.
Next on to number nine.
Check for memory errors.
If you have bad memory, it can cause ALL sorts of weird problems that you might never guess
has to do with your RAM.
To do this go to the start menu and search for "Windows Memory Diagnostic".
Now careful, don't click "Restart Now" unless you actually want to restart this second.
You probably would rather check on next startup, and restart whenever you want.
After you restart it should just start automatically and tell you if anything comes up.
Or if you want to get advanced you can press "F1" to change the test settings, but that's
not really necessary.
If you get a lot of errors it could mean that your RAM isn't seated properly, or one of
the sticks is faulty and needs to be replaced.
If the RAM is actually bad, replacing it is really the only option.
And alright finally for the free options, though there are a couple non-free things
I'll mention in a second after.
So number ten is to just nuke it and start over.
Reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows altogether.
This is obviously the most extreme option, but if you have consistant issues that you
can't seem to fix no matter what, a fresh installation of windows is often the best
way to go.
Explaining how to reformat and reinstall windows is way beyond the scope of this video, and
if you have no idea what I'm talking about then it's probably NOT something you should
do.
But this list would not be complete without it.
So next are a couple bonus options, but these involve actually buying new hardware, so they
are not free.
First, you can buy an SSD to replace your main hard drive.
Sure you could get a small one and just boot Windows off it, but SSDs are much cheaper
today to get a big one.
Let me just tell you, there is probably nothing that will make your computer run faster than
getting an SSD.
Of course assuming the rest of your computer isn't ancient.
And once you get one, you'll never want to go back.
The other thing you can do is MAYBE buy more memory, depending on how much you have now.
If you have 8GB of RAM or less, and you do more than just check your emails and type
up word documents, you could probably benefit from getting more.
However, I definitely think it would be much more beneficial to get an SSD first.
And no, unfortunately you cannot just download more RAM, as awesome as that would be.
So I think that just about sums it all up, those should be the some great things to try
if your computer is running slower than it should be.
If I did forget anything though be sure to let me know, so leave a comment maybe with
any tips you think would be helpful too.
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