ADVANCED WINDOWS 10 TIPS & TRICKS
Discover essential techniques and tools to lick Windows into shape with Nick Peers
Discover essential techniques and tools that will help you supercharge Windows.
There’s no getting away from it: Windows needs almost constant attention. Take your eye off the ball, and it’s suddenly clogged up with unwanted files and struggling to keep up, thanks to a pile of software you thought was interesting at the time, but have long since abandoned. Obviously, keeping your PC in good shape is a key part of making it perform well, but while Windows 10 is streets ahead of its predecessors in terms of keeping its demands on your processor, RAM, and other components quite low, there’s still lots you can do to fine-tune it, discovering tweaks and settings that ensure it’s running at optimum efficiency and speed.
In this feature, we reveal plenty of tips and tricks for making the most of Win 10. We start by giving your PC an efficiency drive— clearing out the rubbish, streamlining startup, and delving into places you may not have thought to cut the bloat and ensure your PC isn’t wasting resources on spurious programs and processes. And speaking of bloat, we reveal a handy tip or two for keeping out unwanted programs.
We also show you how to partition your hard drive, and why keeping your data separate is a good idea (it’s still no substitute for a backup, though, so keep that in place—check out our guide in the June issue). We then take a closer look at certain parts of your hardware—we remind you why upgrading to an SSD is one of the most effective upgrades you can make, plus reveal some handy tweaks for ensuring it’s running smoothly.
If that’s not enough, we share some other secrets, too—why portable apps are better than regular installed programs, for example, plus how to tighten Windows 10’s lax privacy controls. And if you’re about to upgrade to Windows 10, we reveal a path you can follow that enables you to run it alongside your existing version of Windows in a dual-boot configuration. So, get ready to watch your PC take on a new lease of life!
et’s start our efficiency drive with Windows itself. Before you begin, take a System Restore point or drive image—if you take a wrong turn, you can then roll things back and start again. To do the former, type “system restore” into the Search box, and click “Create a Restore point”—verify System Restore has been turned on and correctly configured for your system drive (select it, then click “Configure…” to do so).
Right, we’ll begin by giving Windows a good clean. Start by removing any programs and Store apps you no longer need—you’ll be surprised at how these can build up over time. These can be removed via “Start > Settings > System > Apps & features,” but if you want to go the extra mile, and clear out any leftover files and Registry entries, you’ll need to employ the services of a third-party tool.
This is a tricky area—the only tool we’ve found capable of cleaning out both programs and Windows Store apps is IObit Uninstaller ( www.iobit.com), but it’s a little too aggressive in attempting to get you to install its full Advanced SystemCare Free suite. If you can live with occasional prompts, use its Powerful Scan feature to clear out redundant Registry entries and leftover files. If you’re happy to limit scans to regular programs, try GeekUninstaller ( www.geekuninstaller.com) instead, which has the added benefit of being completely portable—no installation required.
Once you’ve cleaned things up, turn your attention to programs and services that start with Windows—these don’t just lengthen your boot time, but sit in the background consuming resources, too. You can quickly see which are the most resource-hogging startup programs by opening Task Manager from the Taskbar’s right-click menu—switch to the “Start-up” tab (click “More details” first, if necessary), and examine the “Start-up impact” column. Target those High and Medium rated programs you don’t use that often by rightclicking them, and choosing “Disable.”
When it comes to Services, you can manage these yourself via the Services desktop app (type “Services” into the Cortana search bar), using the excellent Black Viper ( www.blackviper.com) guide to see which Services you can safely disable. If the idea of manually trawling through these doesn’t appeal, download the portable Easy Services Optimizer tool from www.sordum. org/ 8637/easy- service- optimizer- v1-2/. Read the guide carefully, but—simply put— choose “Safe” or “Tweaked” for a quickfire range of optimizations that will speed up your PC, but may introduce problems. Use the program’s own “Service > Reset Service List” option, or a Restore point, to undo your changes if necessary.
Many programs and apps continue to run in the background after you close them— check for a program icon in the Taskbar’s Notification Area (click the “^” button to view the full list), or select “Start > Settings > Privacy > Background apps,” and flick the switches to “Off” for all or any apps you want to close fully when not in use.
Clean out your drive
The next step is to reclaim wasted hard drive space—even if your drive isn’t bursting at the seams, it pays to keep things neat and tidy. Open File Explorer, right-click your system drive (the one marked with the Windows logo), and choose “Properties.” Click “Disk Clean-up” on the General tab, and as soon as it opens, click “Clean up system files,” to ensure all options are shown. Work through the list, ticking those items you don’t want— the biggest gains often come from previous
Windows installations and system dump files. You can free up space by deleting System Restore points, too, from the More Options tab, but only do this as a last resort, if you’re desperate for space.
If you want to push the envelope further, download and install CCleaner from www. piriform.com/ccleaner/builds— you’ll find a portable version here if you’d rather not install it. The Cleaner component can sweep through Windows, browsers, and application caches to recover gigabytes of files at a time, but it pays to review each item first—you’ll lose cookies, Jump List entries, and other useful shortcuts if you’re not careful. Click “Analyze,” and you’ll see a list of what’s found—right-click an entry and choose “View detailed results” to see exactly what’s getting cleaned, then rightclick items you want to keep, and choose “Add to Exclude list” to protect them from being cleaned now and in the future.
CCleaner has a Registry cleaning tool as well—long story short, leave it well alone. Registry cleaners don’t improve performance, and usually introduce more problems than they solve. You might get minor joy using a Registry defrag utility to rearrange the Registry hive files in a similar way to your hard drive, but performance gains are minimal—use Free Registry Defrag ( www.registry-clean.net/freeregistry-defrag.htm) if you want to go down this route; it works fine with Windows 10.
If you’re wondering what’s taking up all the space on your hard drive, check out a free portable tool called SpaceSniffer ( www.fosshub.com/ SpaceSniffer. html), which presents the files on your hard drive using the Treemap concept. Run it as an administrator, to give it access to all your files, then focus in on the biggest folders, to see where the large files are hiding away. It’s also worth checking your drive for unnecessary duplicate files—CCleaner can do this for you via its “Tools > Duplicate Finder” component.
One large file SpaceSniffer is likely to identify is hiberfil.sys—it’s usually the same size as your RAM, because it’s where the contents of your memory are stored when you hibernate your PC. If you never use hibernation (sleep doesn’t use this file),
switch it off, and reclaim that space: Press Win-X to open the Quick Access menu, choose “Command Prompt (Admin),” then type “powercfg.exe /hibernate off” into the command prompt.
Clean out the context menu
One area that can get particularly cluttered is the menus that appear when you rightclick items in File Explorer, with programs adding shortcuts of their own. One way to manage these is to manually identify unwanted items when you right-click a particular file or folder, then explore the offending program’s own settings for an option to remove the unwanted options.
If you want to remove multiple items in one go, you can either open Registry Editor and browse to “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,” where you’ll need to navigate five different subkeys to find all the offending items, or you can save time by firing up CCleaner, and navigating to “Tools > Startup > Context Menu” for a complete list of options based on directory, drive, and file context menus. Select multiple items using Ctrl-click, then choose “Disable” to temporarily remove them, or “Delete” to get rid permanently.
One often-overlooked area for cleaning is your web browser. How many add-ons are installed? Internet Explorer encourages you to examine and manage these when it detects those that significantly affect
startup times, but you can see which plugins and add-ons are installed via your browser’s own add-ons screen—how you get here varies from program to program, but Firefox users should type “about:addons” into the Address Bar, while IE users should go to “Tools > Manage Add-ons.” If you have multiple browsers, you can also manage these add-ons collectively via CCleaner’s “Tools > Browser Plugins” section, where you’ll find IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera are covered via separate tabs.
Optimize searches
Is Cortana getting on your nerves? Want to limit her influence, or hide her away completely? If the Search box on the Taskbar is distracting, right-click the Taskbar, and choose “Search > Show Search Icon,” to replace it with a clickable magnifying glass, or “Hidden” to hide it completely (if you’ve set up Cortana to respond to voice commands, you can still invoke her using the “Hey Cortana” command).
Hiding Cortana is one thing, removing her requires more work: Click the Search box, then the Notebook icon, and choose “Settings.” Flick the top switch to “Off” to disable Cortana. You can restrict the Search box to locally stored results (programs, apps, and files) by flicking “Search online and use web results” to “Off,” too. Annoyingly, it’s still a two-step process to access the results for personal files—type your terms, then click “Search my stuff.”
You can optimize Search in other ways, too: type “search” into the Search box, and click “Change how Windows searches.” You’ll see which folders have been selected for indexing—click “Modify” to remove unwanted folders (and reduce wear and tear on the drive) by unticking them, plus add others that aren’t already in indexed locations, to speed up future searches. Click “Advanced” to perform other related tasks—move the index to another drive, for example, or switch to the “File types” tab to determine which files you want to index, and whether to include the contents (such as text), as well as the properties in the index.
Streamline PC usage
It’s not just about making your PC more efficient, you can also speed things up by streamlining the way you use your PC. Get into the habit of using keyboard shortcuts to launch favorite apps, for example—you can manually add these by right-clicking a program’s shortcut in File Explorer, and choosing “Properties.” Use Alt-Ctrl combinations, or experiment with function keys. You can also quickly launch programs you’ve pinned to the Taskbar using the Win key plus a number, which launches apps in the order they appear from left to right—
one to zero (only the first 10 are registered in this way).
Also look at customizing the Start menu and Quick Access menu (the one that appears when you right-click the Start button, or press Win-X). See “Start > Settings > Personalization > Start” for the former, and download the portable Win+X Menu Editor tool from http://winaero.com/ download.php?view.21 to choose exactly which shortcuts to place on the latter.
If your PC is in a secure location and you are its only user, you can save a bit of time when starting Windows by bypassing the lock and logon screens. Type “netplwiz” into the Search box, and click the entry to access the hidden User Accounts Control Panel. Verify your account is selected, then untick “Users must enter a username and password to use this computer.” Click “Apply,” enter your user password when prompted, and click “OK” twice. When you next reboot, there’s no password prompt.
Partition your hard drive
Does your data reside on the same drive as Windows and your programs? That’s potentially bad news if Windows suddenly stops working and you’re forced to reinstall from scratch. If you keep your data on a separate drive, problems with Windows and programs won’t affect it, allowing you the security of troubleshooting and even reinstalling from scratch, or recovering a drive image without touching any of your precious files.
Ideally, your data will reside on a physically separate drive from Windows itself, but this isn’t always practical. Instead, investigate partitioning your hard drive, so you create two or more virtual drives in the space usually reserved for one. The tools you need can be found in Windows itself, but make sure you have enough free space on the drive to create a partition large enough to fit all your data files in. To get an idea of how much space you’ll need, browse to C:\Users, right-click your username, and choose “Properties.”
Now click “Start,” followed by the “>” button next to File Explorer. Choose “More > Manage” to open the Computer Management Console. Select “Disk Management” under “Storage” to see a graphical view of your hard drive. Adjust the view at the top to reveal how much free space is left on the drive. If there’s enough, you can proceed to the next step; if not, you’ll need to temporarily move your data from your user folder to another drive, then— once you’ve verified it’s safely transferred— delete the contents of your user folders (but not the parent folders, such as Documents or Pictures) on drive C to free up space.
Next, right-click drive C in the list, and choose “Shrink Volume.” You’ll see how much space is available to free up—if it doesn’t tally with your findings, you’ll need to employ a third-party partitioning tool instead; try Minitool Partition Wizard ( www.partitionwizard.com), for instance. If there is space, leave at least 10GB (roughly 10,000MB) free, and click “Shrink.” Once done, you’ll see empty space resides next to your system partition. Right-click this, and choose “New Simple Volume.” Follow the prompts to set up a full-sized partition, formatted using NTFS.
Once complete, you’ll have a new drive to transfer your files to. To do this properly, so Windows knows where to find your user folders going forward, browse to “C:\Users\
Username ,” then right-click each key folder—Documents, Downloads, Videos, and so on—in turn, choose the “Properties > Location” tab, then click “Move.” Browse to a suitable location on your newly created
partition (create a folder if necessary), and click “Select Folder,” choosing “Yes” when prompted to move your data across. If your data has already been moved to the drive, simply move it into the corresponding folders you’ve just created, and the job is done.
Build a portable toolkit
We love portable apps here at Maximum PC. They’re confined to a single folder, don’t clutter up your system, and—by storing them on your newly created data partition— survive a Windows reinstall, saving you the bother of reinstalling and setting them up again. Store that folder in the cloud or on a USB flash drive, and you can use them on all your machines, too.
An increasing number of programs— mainly system tools, like some of those we’ve featured, but also full-blown apps, such as LibreOffice, and even your web browser—now come in portable format. If this appeals to you, we recommend going to www.portableapps.com, where you’ll find a handy platform that provides you with its own pop-up menu of easily manageable shortcuts, as well as update notifications for apps you install through the platform itself. And you can create your own shortcuts, too, enabling you to place them on your Taskbar or Start menu, for even easier access.
Hardware tweaks
If you really want to lick Windows into shape, it’s time to consider replacing that tired mechanical hard drive with a superfast SSD drive. In fact, if you’re upgrading your desktop, purchase a smaller SSD (say 128GB or 256GB) purely for Windows and your programs, then leave your data alone on your existing drive, keeping both physically separate.
Once your drive is fitted, and you’re enjoying the sensation of Windows and programs loading in a fraction of the time they used to, why not check to make sure your drive is performing at its very best? Press Win-X, select “Device Manager” from the menu to open Device Manager, then expand “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers,” and verify your system has an AHCI controller instead. Now expand “Disk Drives,” and double-click your SSD drive entry. Switch to the “Policies” tab to also verify that write caching is enabled (leave the “Write-cache buffer flushing” setting unticked).
With the basics checked, type “defragment” into the Search bar, and select “Defragment and Optimize your drives.” Verify your drive has been correctly identified as a “Solid state drive,” so it’s optimized correctly (defragging SSDs is a very bad idea).
Next, visit your drive manufacturer’s website, and see whether there are any drive utilities that exist that can tweak performance further—people with lots of RAM and Samsung drives should install Samsung Magician, for example, because it offers a RAPID Mode setting, which could speed up read/write times by utilizing spare RAM, although most people have reported that it has most effect on older, slower SATA-II interfaces.
You can speed up the performance of other drives, too—particularly USB ones. Return to Device Manager, and investigate the drive’s Policies tab. Here you’ll see the drive is optimized for quick removal, but
if you rarely disconnect it, select “Better performance,” having read the warning.
If you have two or more physical drives installed, consider moving your paging file to the non-system drive, to help speed things up—note, if your system drive is SSD, but the other isn’t, skip this step. Open “System” via the Quick Access menu, and click “Advanced system settings.” Click “Settings” under “Performance,” switch to the Advanced tab, and click “Change.” Untick the automatic option before selecting drive C. Choose “No paging file,” and click “Set,” ignoring the warning about Windows not being able to record information in the event of a crash (it’ll be stored in the paging file on your other drive). Select your other drive, choose “System managed size,” and click “Set” again. Click “OK” three times, and reboot when prompted. Once complete, return to this screen, and verify that drive C has no paging file, and your second drive has a system-managed paging file in place. With the load spread more evenly, you should see further performance improvements.
Is your PC as energy efficient as it could be? Get detailed information about your hardware’s energy capabilities—plus any known problems—by generating an energy report from an Administrative Command Prompt. Type “cd %userprofile%/desktop” followed by “powercfg -energy.” After about 60 seconds, an energy-report.html file is generated on your desktop—double-click it to review its findings in your browser. Visit http://support.microsoft.com/ kb/ 976034 for more information about how to analyze its readings. From here, you can tweak your settings accordingly—both through the Power Options Control Panel, as well as Device Manager (look for a Power Management tab for available options).
Finally, want to clear out Device Manager? When you disconnect devices, they disappear from view, but if you select “View > Show Hidden Devices,” they appear in the list. From here, you can right-click the device in question, and choose “Uninstall” to remove its drivers.