Why is my computer so slow? Tips to improve your computer performance | Biden News

(Pocket-lint) – If you’ve been using a computer for a while, you may find that it slows down and doesn’t work like it used to. Over time your computer can become clogged with files, programs and more. You don’t necessarily need a new machine though, there are ways to improve performance with relative ease.

We’re here to help with some tips and tricks to speed up your computer and ease your misery. We’ve written before about how to optimize your computer for gaming, but for everyday use there are a few things you can do as well.

Adjust your initial settings

One thing that naturally happens over time is the number of programs installed on your computer will increase. This can have a knock-on effect as many of these programs will attempt to run on startup.

So when your computer loads into Windows, all of these applications try to load and not only lengthen the boot process, but also potentially take up system resources once you’re in Windows.

One easy way to counteract this is through tweaks to your startup settings.

• Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC on your keyboard to launch Task Manager
• With Task Manager open find the Startup tab
• Search the list of apps and look for something you don’t use regularly
• Right click on the offending programs and click disable

Alternatively, in Windows 11 you can access these settings by clicking the start button and searching for Startup apps. Click on that system setting and you can then go through and turn apps on and off.

This will stop those programs from loading whenever Windows starts, but it doesn’t mean you can’t use them if and when you need to. Click to open the apps normally if you need them and they will work perfectly fine.

Turn it off and on again

Yes, it’s a cliché but it also makes a difference. If you find that your computer is running slowly, try turning it off and on again. If you regularly leave it running and don’t turn it off, then the memory is probably getting clogged.

Simply turning it off for a while before trying to use it again can make a surprising difference to performance.

Terminate applications that ruin performance

Another source of your problems may well be some applications that hoard system resources and processing power. Google Chrome is notorious for using a lot of RAM, but you may find that there are other programs you use that are tying up your computer.

One way to deal with this is to simply leave them alone. Closing an application may not be enough, because sometimes even when closed applications continue to run in the background.

Background activity will slow down your computer, especially if your system is already limited by the amount of storage space, the capacity of your RAM, or simply by aging components.

When you open Task Manager pay attention to the processes of each application and how many of each of the things it uses. Chrome may be using a lot of RAM, but other programs may be affecting CPU usage or your GPU. If you see one app using a high percentage of any of your computer parts, then right-click on it and click to end the task.

• Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open Task Manager
• Click on the app you want to kill
• Right click and look for the “end task” option
• Click that to close the task and force close the app
• If that doesn’t work, right click again and click “go to details”
• Then right click again on the app and click “end process”
• You will then see a warning that this will close everything
• Click to confirm

Reinstall or restore Windows

It may seem like a drastic option, but one way to get your computer working well again is to reset or reinstall Windows.

A fresh install of Windows takes care of a lot of issues that might slow it down in the first place. It will delete programs you don’t need, remove problematic files and free up memory. It’s drastic because you’ll need to back up anything important, reinstall apps you really need or want to use and more. However, it can be a worthwhile step.

You can take the drastic step of formatting your Windows drive and reinstalling Windows from a USB flash drive or simply restoring Windows using the standard options. We’ve written before about how to do this and it’s pretty simple.

Upgrade your storage

Obviously, another way to speed up your computer is to upgrade your components. We’ve written before about which components you should consider upgrading to improve performance. One of these is your storage.

The latest NVMe drives help speed up a PC by giving you faster loading speeds, which include faster file transfers, faster Windows boot times and more.

You’ll need a relatively new motherboard to take advantage of this, as it will need to work with M.2 NVMe drives. If you bought your machine in the last few years then you may find this to be the case. Buying one of these drives, then cloning and moving Windows onto it and moving away from traditional HDD or SSD storage can make a big difference.

Update your drivers

Staying on top of driver and firmware updates is an important part of computer maintenance. We would recommend making sure you run Windows update regularly and check for updates if you haven’t done so recently.

1. Press the Windows Start button
2. Type “updates” to search
3. Click on Windows Update Settings
4. Tap to check for new updates
5. Install any updates you need

While you’re doing this, we’d also recommend updating your graphics drivers and checking for updates for your motherboard manufacturer and from Intel or AMD.

Adjust for best performance

As standard Windows is designed to give you a visual treat with the best appearance. This means it looks great but doesn’t necessarily work at optimal performance. One solution for a slow computer is to adjust for performance over quality.

Follow these steps:

1. Press the Windows Start button
2. Type “look and feel”
3. Click on “Adjust the performance and appearance of Windows”
4. Look for the setting that says “adjust for best performance”
5. Select that and click apply
6. On the advanced tab click to verify that best performance is set for apps and not background tasks

Free up storage space

Another problem that comes with age is full disks. When you use your computer regularly, you obviously download a lot of files, whether you want to or not. You may install apps and software, download images and videos, fill your cache while browsing the web. Even just running your computer and updating software can fill up your storage and slow things down. To combat this, you can turn to Windows settings to clean up unwanted files and free up storage space.

Click to follow our guide on how to do this:

You can easily check if you’re running out of space just by opening Windows Explorer and checking your drives, but with Windows 11 you can also check storage with these steps:

1. Select the Start button
2. Click on the setup code
3. Click system and then storage

That will then show your drive and how it’s being used with apps, photos, documents and temporary files. If you spy that temporary files are taking up a large portion of storage space, then obviously things need to be addressed.

One quick tip here is that you can click to turn on Storage Sense. Storage Sense is designed to automatically delete files you don’t need and free up storage space.

With more space on your drive you should see some improvement.

Writing by Adrian Willings.