General tips for Windows 10
1 KEEP WINDOWS FULLY UP TO DATE Ah, the Windows Update. Truly the modern-day raven, rap-tap-tapping on Edgar Allen Poe’s operating system with menacing intent. Taking control of your updates is objective number one for anyone trying to optimise their PC, so jump into “Update Settings” and remember to smash that “Check For Updates” button. You can turn on auto-updates, too, under “Advanced options,” but if you have a metered connection, we advise against this, and instead recommend manual updates. You can also pause all updates for up to two weeks; useful if you want to try something in a specific version of Windows 10.
2 SHUT CORTANA UP Get her out! For the vast majority of users, Cortana is little more than a frustration baked into the core of Windows 10. Annoying pop-ups, constant datagathering, and forced Bing search (come on, Microsoft…) make Cortana the least helpful voice assistant in the biz, but fortunately, shutting her down is reasonably straightforward. Find the Cortana page under “Settings,” then toggle all the sliders off. To complete the process, head back out to the main “Settings” menu. Under “Privacy Settings,” you’ll find “Speech” and “Inking and typing personalisation.” Turn both of these off to cut down the amount of data Cortana gathers from your typical PC usage. You can also block
all apps from accessing your camera and microphone on the “Privacy” page.
3 DISABLE STARTUP APPS We’ve all been there, booting up our PC to get a quick task completed, only to be waylaid by Spotify, Steam, Uplay, and Discord introducing themselves like the worst barbershop quartet of all time. Windows has you covered, though – the “Startup” page under “App Settings” lets you view which apps are set to start up immediately (albeit in the background) when you log into Windows, and also which ones have a higher impact on your boot times. Toggle off any of these that you want to open manually, such as Spotify or OneDrive, and your system should start up faster.
4 DISABLE BACKGROUND APPS This one comes down to preference, and isn’t so necessary on more powerful systems with plenty of memory and high-speed storage. Under
“Privacy Settings,” you can individually select which apps you want to run in the background, and disable the rest. There’s a ton of tools included with Windows 10 that you might use sometimes, but don’t ever want running in the background. Windows News? Disabled. Voice Recorder? Deactivated. Xbox Console Companion? Begone! 5 UNINSTALL UNWANTED APPLICATIONS Speaking of stuff included with Windows 10, there’s plenty of bloatware you can just get rid of. The most obvious contender is of course Candy Crush, but if you take a trip into “App Settings” and scroll through the “Apps & features” list, you may find a surprising amount of software you never use, and never intend to use. Click on a program to view options, and uninstall it from there. If you’re unsure what a piece of software does, always look it up online before removing it.
6 UPDATE DEVICE DRIVERS Updating your drivers is often a handy fix for something not working with a PC, but it’s a good idea to keep your device drivers up to date whenever possible. To check for updates, rightclick the “Home” button and select “Device Manager,” then right-click the device you want to update the drivers on. You can also scan for new hardware here; if you change something about your physical setup, you might need to relocate it within the Device Manager in order to update the drivers and ensure everything is working properly.
7 LOG IN FASTER The Windows 10 lock screen is a pointless innovation. Having to swipe up or hit the spacebar before logging in slows things down a bit, and using a conventional password is slower, too. First up, assign a PIN rather than a password for logging in; four digits and no need to hit Enter, either. If your system supports it, Windows Hello is pretty speedy, too. You can even remove the lock screen altogether, going straight to the login screen upon boot. Annoyingly, how you do this is different for Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. For Windows 10 Home edition, you need to run regedit from the “Run” prompt, make your way to “HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE >
Policies > Microsoft” and right-click “Windows,” select “New > Key” and call it “Personalisation.” Once created, right-click this key and add a new “DWORD (32-bit) Value,” with a name of “NoLockScreen.” Double click this and set the “Value” to 1. For Win 10 Pro, hit Win-R, type “gpedit” and hit Enter. Double-click “Administrative Templates,” double-click “Control Panel,” click “Personalisation,” then double-click “Do not display the lock screen,” and click “Enabled.” Click “Apply,” and then “OK.” Job done.
Speed up Windows
11 CREATE A RESTORE POINT AND RESTORE YOUR SYSTEM If all hope is lost, returning to an earlier save point is the best course of action. This advice holds true for both videogames and Windows 10, although hopefully you’ll never have to use it. In the Control Panel, go through “Security and System > System > System Protection,” and you’ll open up the window for system restore options. You can hit the big “System Restore” button to revert your version of Windows to a saved restore point; your PC should regularly create these by default, but it saves over the previous one when it does so. Hit “Configure” and you can tweak your restore settings, or create new restore points. This isn’t something you need to do too often, but it’s worth having restore points for each of your drives, just in case a new software or OS update causes problems.
12 TRACK CPU USAGE AT ALL TIMES There’s a handy function Task Manager has hidden in its box of tricks. When the Task Manager window is open, you should see a tiny square icon with a grid pattern in the bottom-right corner of your screen, in the notification area. It may be hidden in the expanded menu; just click the arrow and drag it on to the taskbar if needed. That icon is a microcosm of your CPU usage, showing a tiny graph that indicates how much of your CPU is currently being utilised, and placing your mouse over it shows exact percentages. To keep it present when Task Manager isn’t open, select “Hide when minimised” from the Task Manager’s “Options” drop-down menu, then minimise the window.
13 CHECK FOR MALWARE Of course, ideally you won’t have a single bit of malware on your PC, but if you suspect something is amiss (or you watched in slow motion from across the room as your child clicked an extremely dubious link), Windows 10 can scan your system for viruses. Find the “Windows Security” tab under “Update & Security Settings,” and select “Virus & threat protection.” From this menu, you can run quick security scans on your system, or set up full scans that take longer. Windows Defender automatically scans your system for malware periodically; you can tweak that in this menu, too, check for security updates, and manually input exemptions from Defender’s scans. That last point can be particularly helpful for users who deal with a lot of unlicensed software or shareware, but always err on the side of caution when it comes to downloading new programs.
14 USE TASK MANAGER BETTER Making the best use of Task Manager is key to mastering control over Windows 10. First up, access it faster by right-clicking the “Home” button and selecting it; no need to Ctrl-Alt-Del here. You’re also going to want to get rid of the simplified view by hitting “More details” to expand to the full Task Manager experience. Here, you can monitor component usage, view the full suite of active and background processes, and a whole lot more that you won’t need to fiddle with. What is useful here is the ability to check exactly how much pressure each program is putting on your CPU, GPU, memory, and drives. If one background app is chewing up CPU power, or you want to compare the RAM impact of two different browsers, this is the place to do it. You can end any task manually by right-clicking it, but be careful – there are lots of background processes that are vital to your system’s operation, so don’t shut off anything you don’t recognise.
15 DISABLE RESUME APPS ON STARTUP Another matter of preference, here we’ll explain how to disable apps and browser tabs resuming upon booting up. If you use your system a lot and have numerous Chrome tabs you want to preserve, skip this step, but otherwise, take a trip into “Accounts Settings.” Under “Sign-in options,” at the bottom of the page, there’s a slider for reopening your apps “after an update or restart.” It tries to resume the active programs you had running when you last shut down your PC, potentially including non-essential background processes, and that slows down your PC’s boot time. Toggle it off.
16 FREE UP DRIVE SPACE The less stuff on your drive, the better it runs. This is more true of older hardware, but can also affect SATA SSDs to a significant degree. Clearing up your drive on a semi-regular basis is a good idea, as it can also improve the drive’s effective lifespan. There’s a few ways to do this, which work best when done in conjunction: First off, empty the recycle bin. It’s easy to forget about that little white trash can on your desktop, but emptying it regularly is a good idea. Windows 10 also has a built-in disk cleanup tool, found under “Windows
Administrative Tools” in the “Start” menu. If you’ve recently upgraded to Windows 10, this is worth doing; it can safely erase old system files. If you can, move files to a cloud storage solution, such as Google
Drive or OneDrive – that can help, too!
17 CHECK YOUR SYSTEM HEALTH WITH PERFORMANCE MONITOR Another handy tool in Windows 10’s repertoire is the Performance Monitor. Activate it by punching “perfmon /report” into the search bar (without the quotes) and give it a few minutes to gather system data. It then spits out a highly detailed interactive report; any major issues with system files or processor loads should be highlighted immediately, and you can also check through a series of system checks and a resource overview, which can identify if one part of your system is working overtime when it shouldn’t be.
18 TRACK YOUR TEMPERATURES There is a multitude of third-party tools that can let you check your system’s operating temperatures, but our recommendation would be CPUID’s HardwareMonitor app, available for free from www.cpuid.com. Not only does it enable you to track in real time the temperatures of all your PC’s components, but it also shows you operating frequencies, voltages, fan speeds, and more. It’s a great way to quickly check whether your system is overheating or throttling elsewhere; if you see temps striking above 70 C when your system is idling, it might be time to look into some cooling upgrades.
19 DISABLE SYNCHING Windows 10 has a bit of a digital crush on synching everything; whether that’s banal things such as appearance themes, or important stuff, such as passwords, search history, and cloud data. If you use Windows on numerous devices, this can be helpful; otherwise, it just puts extra strain on your system, and potentially poses a cybersecurity risk. You can shut off a number of these under “Sync your settings” in “Accounts Settings,” but you might also want to disable OneDrive synching, too. To do this, you have to open up OneDrive and head into the settings, then select “Unlink this PC” under the “Account” tab.
20 DISABLE VISUAL EFFECTS Look, Windows 10 is great, but it’s undeniable that some areas are overdesigned. This step does come down to personal preference regarding aesthetics, but it can also be useful if you’re running a system with integrated graphics that needs to keep things as simple as possible. Under the “System Properties” menu, there’s a tab entitled “Advanced.” Hit the “Performance settings” button on this page to open up full customization of all the visual effects baked into Windows 10. Hit “Custom” and you can tweak to your heart’s content; you probably won’t want to disable everything, but there are some animations here that can safely be turned off.