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Almost all the machine in this world needs regular maintenance. Your PC is not an exception to this. When you use your PC for a long time without doing any maintenance, PC performance gets lowered over the time. So, it is very crucial to carry out regular maintenance activities to keeps your PC function well. In this post, we will see top 8 basic but necessary steps to make PC faster again.
Simple and Effective Steps to Make PC Faster
Step # 1 – Power Option
Here we are going to adjust your PC to consume more energy to perform better. To do that you need to move over to the start menu and search for ‘Power option.’
Now you will see it in the search result. So just click on it.
Now it will bring you to the Control Panel –> Power option window. Here you can see your PC’s power plans is set to balance by default.
“Balanced” power plan is a plan which is somewhat in between energy saving plan and High Performance. So if we need to push your PC up to its maximum limits and make pc faster, we need to choose the High-performance power plan. If you don’t see the high-performance power plan here, it’s always in the hide additional plans tab. So just go ahead and select the High-Performance power plan, and close the window.
Here we have completed the step number 1, so let’s check step number 2.
Step # 2 – Remove Unwanted Programs
In this step, we are going to uninstall every unwanted program from your PC. For doing this, click on the start menu. Then search for ‘Control Panel’. Now you can see it in the result, Just click on it. Now you will see the control panel window. From here you can navigate to the ‘Programs’. Now click on ‘Uninstall a Program’ link. Here you will see every program that installed on your PC.
Scroll down in the list to find and get rid of every single undesired or malicious programs. In case you find any unwanted programs on the list then double click on it, to uninstall from your PC. By uninstalling all of these undesired programs, your PC performance will become more steady, and you can free up some space on your hard drive too.
Step # 3 – Disable Startup Programs That Are Not Needed
This process will help to hold more of your PC resources for High-end applications. For example, by disabling unwanted startup programs, there will be not a lot of unwanted program running every time when your system startup, and also this step will help you to deliver faster boot time as well. Now let’s see how to do this. Launch your task manager.
Launch your task manager. The easy way to open your task manager is by right click on any clear space on your task bar. Choose task manager from the right click menu. Once you open the task manager, go to the startup tab. In startup tab, you will find a list of all the programs that get started automatically. Generally when you install any software on Windows OS, sometimes it adds a small program that executes when starting up Windows. In case you have installed a lot of programs, then you may experience slow PC boot up. These programs run in the system background for ever and cause slow PC performance.
If any programs are not in use, then you may consider disabling them to achieve a better startup speed and System Performance. For example. If you are not an active Dropbox user, you can disable Dropbox to start automatically once your system startup. Make sure not to disable any programs published by Microsoft Corporation, and these programs might be needed to function your PC correctly. Do not disable the antivirus program as well. So here we have completed step 3.
Now let’s close the task manager and proceed to step 4.
Step # 4 – Disable Unwanted System Services
Here we are going to disable unwanted windows services. Windows service is a software program that runs in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. So, by disabling those unwanted services, we can achieve even better performance. So let’s check how to do this. Go to start menu and look for ‘Services.’ Now you can see it in the results, just click on it. A services window will get opened.
So let’s check how to do this. Go to start menu and look for ‘Services.’ Now you can see it in the results, just click on it. A services window will get opened. You need to know the services that are required to be disabled. First, disable ‘Diagnostic Policy Service’. Scroll through the list and find it or you can keep on hitting the first letter of the service until you find it. Unfortunately, there is no other method to find the service even quicker than this. Once you locate the service, right click on it and choose Properties. Now from here click on stop button.
Finally, choose manual from the startup type. Similarly do the same with the other three services as well.
Here is the list of services that you should disable:
1: Diagnostic Policy Service
2: Offline Files
3: Portable Device Enumerator Service
4: Secondary Logon
That’s all here. So, let’s move on.
Step # 5 – Defragment and Optimize PC drives
Defragment is a maintenance task required by your hard drives. Most of the hard drives have spinning platters, with data stored in different places around the platter. When your PC writes data to these drives, it does so in “blocks” format. These blocks get arranged in sequence. Fragmentation occurs when those files get divided between blocks which are separated from one another. It takes longer time for the hard drive to read those files. Defragmentation arranges those blocks back in regular order, so hard drive head doesn’t have to check throughout the platter to read a single file.
There is no need to perform the defragmentation if you are using an SSD also known as Solid state drive as SSD do not contain moving parts. Defragmentation on an SSD means making your SSD slower. So don’t try it. If in case you have SSD, please skip this step.
To perform defragmentation on your windows machine, you need to go to the start menu and look for defragment and optimize drives. Just Click on the defragment and optimize drives. From here you need to select your OS drive which is frequently C drive. Now click on Optimize.
Now the System drive starts getting optimized. The process will take a while, so please be patient, and let it complete.
Once it finished, you can close the window, and step number 5 is over. Now you have optimized drive in your PC.
Step # 6 – Cleanup Memory
To clean up unnecessary files on your system, you need to perform this step. So let’s check the details. Go to the file explorer. Now right click on PC system drive or C drive. This is the drive where windows OS is installed. Now choose properties from the window. We are now on the general tab. Here you will see the disk clean up option. Just click on it, and allow it to scan the files. Once the file scanning is over, click on the cleanup system files. By doing this, it will scan again.
Now click on ok button. The system will ask you with the prompt as “Are you sure you want to permanently delete these files?” Click on Yes button. This will delete only the useless files. The cleanup process is now completed.
Step # 7 – Delete Unnecessary Temporary Files
In this step, we are going to clean up the temporary files. These files are also known as temp files. Windows operating system creates these temporary files. Some file gets created when we execute any software in PC. As its name indicate, these files are created temporarily. Once you close an application, most of the temp files that are generated by the application will still stay on your system, and when you relaunch the program, it will create new temp files along with the old one, recurring this cycle may cause your system performance to slow down. It is a good practice to delete such temporary files to free up more space on your hard drive.
So, let’s see how to do this. Navigate to start menu and right click on the windows icon. Then choose the option run. Now type %temp% and click on ok. Now a folder will be opened with several files. Select all the files using Ctrl + A and delete those files. Now close the folder. Open run box again by right clicking on the windows icon. Now type ‘temp’ and click on ok. Again, a folder will appear, then select all the files in it, right click and delete. Again open run and this time type prefetch. Now click on ok. Now click on continue.
Select everything and delete after that, you can Close the folder, and that’s pretty much everything we can do here.
Step # 8 – Reduce Run Time Service
Navigate to the start menu and click on the windows icon, from this menu select run. Now type in msconfig, inside the run box, then press enter key. From here go to service. Now make sure, hide all Microsoft services option is selected or marked. That’s important because there is no need to disable any Important services accidentally.
So make sure you do that before going any further. Now look through the services, and uncheck every unwanted or rarely using services. You can find out every unwanted service, just by identifying their names. It is a straightforward process. Click on ok, and we are done with this step.
Just follow these steps. You will find notably performance boost in your PC.