Rein in unruly programs

The act of running multiple programs (never mind numerous background processes) is a delicate one, requiring a fine balance to keep everything running smoothly. It doesn’t always work, which is why your PC may sometimes seemingly grind to a halt or act sluggishly for a few minutes.

If you’re running Windows 10 on an older PC or low-powered tablet or laptop device, you may find it frequently sticks, due to the competing demands of different processes. One solution is to scale back what you do — keep open programs to a minimum, and trim startup back, too.

If this doesn’t help, then downloading and installing the Free version of Process Lasso ( bitsum.com/processlasso) will, and it can even help on more powerful setups as well. When prompted, leave the default options as they are, and the main window opens to show you what’s running on your device, and how Process Lasso is balancing it. Its ProBalanced tool is up and running from the start, ensuring no process can overwhelm the system with its demands. A summary tells you how it’s working, and the log reveals which processes have been neutered when their demands get too high (click ‘Insights’ for a handy summary).

You can also tweak things further: Open the Main menu and choose ‘SmartTrim’ to free up physical RAM when it’s safe to do so. Select ‘IdleSaver’ if you’d like to cut energy usage, and choose ‘Gaming mode’ for those times when you want to play games or perform other CPU-intensive tasks, such as ripping or encoding HD video.