10 Ways To Make Windows 10 And 11 Faster

👍 Computers slow down for many reasons, I'll review some of the steps you can take to make it faster again.

👍 Make Windows Faster
- Reduce running software
- Scan for malware
- Let your anti-malware tools work
- Turn off the search indexer
- Reduce visual effects
- Adjust the power mode
- Do less
- Upgrade your internet (if you can)
- Get more RAM (if you can)
- Upgrade to an SSD (if you can)

Chapters
0:00 Make Windows Faster
0:40 Reduce running software
2:40 Scan for malware
3:40 Run a full scan
4:00 Let your anti-malware tools work
5:04 Turn off the search indexer
6:40 Reduce visual effects
7:45 Adjust the power mode
9:00 Do less
10:30 Upgrade your internet (if you can)
12:00 Get more RAM (if you can)
13:40 Upgrade to an SSD (if you can)
14:45 Bonus
15:00 Reinstall Windows
15:20 Reduce the color depth
16:00 Defrag
16:30 Slow CPU
17:30 Reboot
18:20 Subscribe to Ask Leo!

More Ask Leo!

#askleo #windows #speed

[dwmac]

Thanks Leo. Your suggestions made a big difference in my W10 machine. Much faster. Thank you!

[kerall]

Well presented Leo, one of the better tutorials for the less than computer savvy folks like me... I learn a little more every time I check-in. Thanks for sharing!

[keensoundguy]

Don't just disable those unwanted Windows apps, uninstall them. I take it a step further and never let them get installed in the first place. Whenever I get a new computer, I upgrade (free for me, your circumstance may differ) from the Home version to the Pro version. I do a clean install by downloading the ISO image (tip: install a user-agent switcher extension to your browser and set it to Linux before visiting the Microsoft site: then you'll get a direct link for downloading the ISO rather than having to use the media creation tool) and using NTLite (the freeware version suits my needs) to create a customized ISO. I remove all those apps I don't want, everything related to XBox, etc.

[banjohead]

Valuable information well explained -- great job!

[spacial]

Great advice presented clearly. Thanks!

[acreguy]

Great hardware discussion, Leo. I use all SSDs and have a disk drive specifically for backups, where speed is not an issue. I have 48 GB of RAM, and Intel 7 processor. My computer boots Windows 10 in about 20 seconds and is suitable for gaming and high-end audio recording, which I do....and yet the thieves at MS have declared my PC a dinosaur for running Windows 11. I hope this comes back to bite MS in the you know

[dee_ripples]

Great video again. One slight remark: bear in mind that turning off the search indexer will disabke the timeline in Windows 10

[roncaruso]

I have a 7 year old HP Laptop with 8 GB RAM WIN 10. My laptop always gets slow. I just back up my data then do a factory reset. Good as new.

[davinp]

There are some applications you install that like to add themselves to startup with Windows, so you should check the startup folder and what Leo showed to stop them from running at startup as many do NOT need to run when Windows starts

[Andre-zdke]

I have an eleventh way. Sell your Windows machine and buy an Apple silicon based computer instead. After decades of developing software on Window OS, as soon as I retired several years ago I changed to MacOS and never regretted it. Especially now with Apple's M-series processors. (There is a learning curve of course).

[johngoard]

Yes Leo I did replace my old spinners a long time ago and when I got my new laptop it came with one of those newer PCi Express hard drives and it is so much quicker than the original SSD types.

[sonfather]

Excellent information Leo, Good on you mate

[rememberme]

For me it was removing thumbails. Explorer got really slow after the thumnail DB reached few GBs.

[forlandos]

Very good :). One thing you need to fix is the irritating cookies message that shows on every article or other pages on your website.

[Waitomo]

Very good info for the people that are not very savy.. I was an engineer for DEC in Australia..And have been involved since win 3.11 came out.. The only thing I reckon you need here that's missing is... Virtual memory, setting it to the min and max by hand.. I have 20GB dram "available" in my machine, not Literally! I have more of course. But Win11 told me how much I have.. thus you need to set virtual memory appropriately. And I also used to set the screen to 16 bits rather than 32.. Not so necessary now and not available..

[Corteum]

You can't just stop/disable "Windows Search" service to stop files from being indexed. You have to uncheck "Allow files on drive to be indexed...." and click "Apply" to stop it fully.

[ibizenco]

When Windows is slow, then I know that the goddam crap is updating (in the background), while I never ASK it to do that.

What a relief Linux is (which will never do anything that I do not ask it to do).

[ingemarolson]

Hey Leo (this might be another "question" for you?).

I am (still) on Win 10. So I go to the Start icon, right-click, and get a list of options, including Computer Management. I left-click on that one, and ... nothing (well, the list of options disappears). Hmmm. Right-clicking has the same (non-)effect, btw. When I try the various options, I find that some of them "work" (ie: bring up another window): Apps and Features, Power Options, System, Network Connections, Settings, Search, Run, Shut Down or Sign Out; whereas others have no effect/only close the option list: Event Viewer, Device Manager, Disk Management, Computer Management, Windows Powershell, Windows Powershell (Admin), Task Manager, File Explorer, Desktop (ok, I don't know what Desktop is supposed to do).

I CAN get to (eg) Powershell by left-clicking on the Start icon and scrolling down to the Windows Powershell options and choosing one.

It appears that "something" is broken/mis-configured, but what? And how do I fix it?

[erie]

Replacing a processor is quite possible on existing motherboards, and is relatively easy to do.

[WriterBren]

Defender doesn’t need to startup? If you don’t start it up, does that mean it’s not always running in the background? Serious question because I thought it was like any antivirus that needs to run.