How to speed up your laptop
Does your computer seem sluggish? Don’t buy a replacement before trying our simple tweaks to help it run more smoothly.
Computers don’t actually slow down as they age; it just feels like that! In reality, they continue running as quickly as they ever did, but we often ask them to do far more than they were designed for. You can speed up your Windows computer with a few simple tweaks and get another couple of years out of it for free.
STEP 1 BACK UP BEFORE YOU START
You’ll need to invest in an external drive if you don’t already own one (try WD My Passport, from £33.99, westerndigital.com). To set it up, open Control Panel, click System and Security, followed by File History. STEP 2 STREAMLINE
Open Settings (press Windows+i), then click Apps followed by Startup to see which programs start when your computer boots. Use the switches to turn off all but security tools like Windows Security and synchronisation tools such as Onedrive and Dropbox.
STEP 3 DECLUTTER
Press the Windows key and type ‘cleanup’, then click Disk Clean-up and Windows will search for old
files you can safely remove. Click each of the checkboxes beside the results, then OK to reclaim the space they occupy. Now press the Windows key again and type ‘defrag’. Click Defragment and Optimise Drives, select a drive in the list and click Optimise.
STEP 4 TRIM SEARCH SETTINGS
Press the Windows key, type ‘search’ and click Windows Search Settings. Switch from Enhanced to Classic to reduce the number of folders that Windows indexes to provide local search results.
Your own data, like documents and photos, will still be indexed, but supplementary locations you won’t often want to explore will be excluded. This will reduce the resources consumed by maintaining the index, but if it doesn’t have a significant impact you can turn off Search altogether.
Press Windows and type ‘services’. Click the top result, then double-click Windows Search in the window this opens. Select ‘Disabled’ from the menu beside ‘Startup type’, then click Stop in the ‘Service status’ box. Click Apply, followed by OK, and reboot.