How can you speed up your computer? Well, for one thing, what sort of programs do you have installed? Do you have a bunch of garbage that you don’t use? If so, go through your control panel settings to applications and uninstall any application that you don’t need. Applications take up space and they often take up memory. So if you don’t need them, get rid of them.
Another thing you can do is take advantage of a feature that Windows 10 began offering, which is very handy. And that is to kill off startup processes. Do a Control-Alt-Delete on your Windows 10 or 11 computer and. Open up the Advanced tab. Your control panel. Look for startup apps. Lucy Goosey! I’ve been waiting here this long. Go through your list of startup apps and see if there are any that you don’t need to start up.
For example, by default, Windows starts up OneDrive and Edge. Even if you use OneDrive and Edge, there’s no reason to have them auto start. This is particularly true in the case of Edge. The fact is that most people don’t use Edge. Use Edge to download another web browser and use that. So there’s absolutely no reason for Edge to be running at all in those circumstances. If Edge does auto start, that means it takes up memory and it also takes up memory. Also slows your system down. Go through that list and disable anything that does not appear to be a package or application that you need to have running all the time. Then reboot your computer.
If it acts strangely, because something didn’t start, then you can always go back into that Control-Alt-Delete dialog and get into Task Manager and add it. Well, it’s been my experience that hardly any… Startup apps that you don’t instantly recognize are necessary to actually start up. How much RAM does your system have? It takes at least 8 gigs of RAM to run Windows 10. And about that same amount to run Windows 11. If you don’t have 8 gigs of RAM, then you should look into adding some RAM. RAM can be purchased quite cheaply. You just have to make sure that the RAM chips will actually fit your machine.
The best way to do this is to tear into your machine and get the numbers off your existing RAM, type them into a search engine, and order more of the same. Let’s say you have 4 memory slots and you have 4 gigs of RAM. You can easily order 4 more, 2 more, 2 gig RAM chips to come up with a total of 8. More RAM means a faster system. By far though, the biggest and most dramatic change you can make to your system is to go from a spinning hard drive, is a mechanical hard drive, to a solid state drive.
Solid state drives respond instantly, while mechanical drives have to access certain parts of the spinning disks in order to execute or access fine. Solid-state drives have also gotten very inexpensive. You can get a 500 gig drive for around 40 bucks if you shop around. You can get a terabyte drive for around 60.
So, you have a new solid state drive. How do you do this is to use an open source product called you will find ISO files that you can burn to a CD or to a flash drive. Once you get Clonzilla burned to a drive, a removable drive that is, your computer can boot off of it. What you do is you power your computer down, you install your new solid state drive while leaving your old drive in place. Then, you insert the Clonzilla removable drive in and turn your machine on. Enter your boot menu. This can usually be done by hitting escape or F8 or another key combination. Look for your specific machine’s boot key combination on the internet.
Instruct your machine to boot off the Clonezilla drive. It will do so. It will then go through its own boot up process and your machine is actually running on Clonezilla’s operating system. It will then step you through finding your hard drives and giving you the option of cloning one to the other. The thing you have to remember is to do the same size solid state dry. It is possible to clone a smaller spinning drive to a larger solid-state drive, but it is a major pain in the backside. The best thing you can do is match your hard drive sizes. Once you do this, Clonzilla will easily step through cloning your old spinning drive to your new solid-state drive. When it’s finished, it will either shut down or reboot depending on what you have told it to do. Your next step is to disconnect your spinning drive. You can actually remove it from your system if you like. Now, restart your computer off your solid state drive. If everything goes smoothly, as it quite often does, then you will suddenly notice a dramatic increase in speed. It’s going to feel like you bought a brand new computer.
So, to speed up your computer, first of all, clean out any garbage programs that you don’t need anymore. Second, do a Control-Alt-Delete in Startup Task Manager and go to Startup Apps and disable every single app that you do not need to start up automatically. Third, max out your RAM. And fourth, if you still have a spinning hard drive, switch to a solid-state drive. By doing those things, you’re going to notice a much faster, much more efficient system. Perhaps you were thinking about buying a new computer because your old one had gotten so slow. This will likely give you more years of service from the same hardware. I am running a 2008 manufactured laptop with Xubuntu Linux. I’ve maxed out its memory at 3 gigs and I’ve also installed a solid state drive and I bought a new battery. That little machine is doing quite well, and will probably have years of service left.