10. Disable shadows, animations and visual effects
Windows 10 has some nice eye candy — shadows, animations and visual effects. On fast, newer PCs, these don't usually affect system performance. But on slower and older PCs, they can exact a performance hit.
It's easy to turn them off. In the Windows 10 search box, type sysdm.cpl and press Enter. That launches the System Properties dialog box. Click the Advanced tab and click Settings in the Performance section. That brings you to the Performance Options dialog box. You'll see a varied list of animations and special effects.
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The Performance Options dialog box lets you turn off effects that might be slowing down Windows 10. (Click image to enlarge it.)
If you have time on your hands and love to tweak, you can turn individual options on and off. These are the animations and special effects you'll probably want to turn off, because they have the greatest effect on system performance:
- Animate controls and elements inside windows
- Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
- Animations in the taskbar
- Fade or slide menus into view
- Fade or slide ToolTips into view
- Fade out menu items after clicking
- Show shadows under windows
However, it's probably a lot easier to just select “Adjust for best performance” at the top of the screen and then click OK. Windows 10 will then turn off the effects that slow down your system.
11. Disable transparency
In addition to turning off shadows, animations and visual effects, you should also disable the transparency effects that Windows 10 uses for the Start menu, the Taskbar and the Action Center. It takes a surprising amount of work for Windows to create these transparency effects, and turning them off can make a difference in system performance.
To do it, from Settings, choose Personalization > Colors, scroll down to “Transparency effects” and move the slider to Off.
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Turning off Windows 10’s transparency effects can help speed up performance. (Click image to enlarge it.)
12. Turn on automated Windows maintenance
Every day, behind the scenes, Windows 10 performs maintenance on your PC. It does things like security scanning and performing system diagnostics to make sure everything is up to snuff — and automatically fixes problems if it finds them. That makes sure your PC runs at peak performance. By default, this automatic maintenance runs every day at 2:00 a.m., as long as your device is plugged into a power source and is asleep.
There’s a chance, though, that the feature has been accidentally turned off or you haven’t had your PC plugged in for a while, so the maintenance hasn’t been done. You can make sure it’s turned on and runs every day, and run it manually if you’d like.
Run the Control Panel app and select System and Security > Security and Maintenance. In the Maintenance section, under Automatic Maintenance, click “Start maintenance” if you want it to run now. To make sure that it runs every day, click “Change maintenance settings,” and from the screen that appears, select the time you’d like maintenance to run, and check the box next to “Allow scheduled maintenance to wake up my computer at the scheduled time.” Then click OK.
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You can designate a time each day for Windows to run its maintenance tasks. (Click image to enlarge it.)
13. Kill bloatware
Sometimes the biggest factor slowing down your PC isn't Windows 10 itself, but bloatware or adware that takes up CPU and system resources. Adware and bloatware are particularly insidious because they may have been installed by your computer's manufacturer. You'd be amazed at how much more quickly your Windows 10 PC can run if you get rid of it.
First, run a system scan to find adware and malware. If you've already installed a security suite such as Norton Security or McAfee LiveSafe, you can use that. You can also use Windows 10's built in anti-malware app — just type Windows Defender in the search box, press Enter, and then click Scan Now. Windows Defender will look for malware and remove any it finds.
It's a good idea to get a second opinion, though, so consider a free tool like Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. The free version scans for malware and removes what it finds; the paid version offers always-on protection to stop infections in the first place.
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Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a useful application that will scan for and fix Windows 10 PC problems. (Click image to enlarge it.)
Now you can check for bloatware and get rid of it. Several free programs will do this for you; your best bet is to run several of them, because no single one will find all the bloatware on your PC. Good choices are the PC Decrapifier, Should I Remove It? and SlimComputer.
For more details about removing bloatware, check out Computerworld's article “Bloatware: What it is and how to get rid of it.”
14. Defrag your hard disk
The more you use your hard disk, the more it can become fragmented, which can slow down your PC. When a disk gets fragmented, it stores files willy-nilly across it, and it takes a while for Windows to put them together before running them.
Windows 10, though, has a built-in defragmenter you can use to defragment your hard disk. You can even tell it to run automatically so it stays constantly defragmented.
To do it, type defrag into the search box and press Enter. From the screen that appears, select the drive you want you want to defragment. Click the Optimize button to defragment it. Select multiple disks by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking each you want to defragment.
If you want to have your disk or disks defragmented automatically, click the Change settings button, then check the box next to “Run on a schedule.” Now select the frequency at which you want the disk(s) defragmented by clicking the drop-down next to Frequency and selecting Daily, Weekly or Monthly. (Weekly will be your best bet.) From this screen you can also choose multiple drives to defragment.
Note: If you have an SSD, defragging won't offer any noticeable performance boost, and it could cause wear on the disk. So it's not worth your while to defrag SSDs.
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You can set Windows 10's built-in disk defragmenter to run automatically on a schedule. (Click image to enlarge it.)
15. Disable Game Mode
If you’re a serious gamer, you probably know all about Game Mode, which optimizes your PC for playing games. That’s great for when you’re doing just that, but it can slow down your system when you’re not playing because it multitasks with lots of processes running in the background. So turning off Game Mode can give your PC a quick boost. (You can always turn it back on again when you want to play a game.)
Game Mode is turned on by default, so even if you’ve never played a game on your PC, it’s probably enabled. To turn it off, go to Settings > Gaming > Game Mode and move the Game Mode slider to Off. After you do that, click the Xbox Game Bar category on the left hand side of the screen, and on the screen you come to, turn the slider at the top of the screen to Off.
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Turning off Game Mode can give your PC an instant boost.
16. Shut down and restart Windows
Here’s one of IT’s not-quite-secret weapons for troubleshooting and speeding up a PC: Shut it down and restart it. Doing that clears out any excess use of RAM that otherwise can’t be cleared. It also kills processes that you might have set in motion and are no longer needed, but that continue running and slow your system. If your Windows 10 PC has turned sluggish over time for no apparent reason, you may be surprised at how much more quickly it will run when you do this.
Try just some of these tricks, and you'll find that you've got a faster Windows 10 PC — and one that is less likely to have any reliability problems.
This article was originally published in February 2016 and most recently updated in January 2022.
