Step 1: Find out what's slowing your PC down
| Sometimes programs can be affected by an update, develop faults, or are just badly written. This can cause them to use significant amounts of your system resources resulting in poor overall PC performance. To see which programs are currently having the most impact on your PC, right click on the Start Menu Icon and select Task Manager. Once in task manager, select More Details. You’ll then see a list of all the processes running on your machine. Look at the CPU and Memory columns to see if there is one in particular that dominates the statistics. If you want to stop any program, just click on it, then click on the End Task button in the bottom right hand corner. |  |
Step 2: Check for malware and other threats
| Running a system scan will ensure that there are no erroneous pieces of software causing harm and slowing down your computer. Windows Defender is an anti-malware program which comes built into Windows 10 to help protect your PC. To use Windows Defender, navigate to the Start Menu > Settings > Update and Security > Windows Defender. Then in the right-hand panel scroll down until you see Open Windows Defender. Click this, then in the next window on the right-hand side there are options to run a Quick, Full, or Custom scan. Make sure you won't need your PC for a little while and opt for the Full Scan, then click Scan Now. If Windows finds anything untoward it will let you know and suggest ways to deal with the issue. |  |
Step 3: Clear space on hard drive
| Operating systems will generally borrow parts of the hard drive to give themselves a bit of thinking space, so if your storage is pretty much maxed out it can cause performance issues. To check how much room is left on your drive, go to the Windows Start Menu > Settings > System > Storage and you'll be shown the current usage on your computer. Clicking on This PC will open a breakdown of all the types of data that are using up your storage. It's generally a good idea to have at least 10% of your total hard drive space free. If you're looking for files to delete to free up space on your computer, the Downloads folder is a good place to start. Uninstalling applications from your computer that you no longer require is also a good way to clear up space, and of course just going through your general documents to see if there are any files that you no longer need. Windows Disk Cleanup is a tool built into Windows 10 which quickly removes temporary files and other unimportant data. To access it, search for Windows Disk Cleanup in your start menu, click on the top result and then select which drive you want to clean. The tool will do the rest itself. |  |
Step 4: Reduce the amount of programs that run at startup
| When you install new programs they often want permission to start running as soon as you boot your computer. This means that they continue to run in the background, using up resources even if you don't use them. To refine what programs load up when you start your computer, right click on the Start Menu Icon and select Windows Task manager. once in Windows Task manager, select More Details and then the Start-up tab. You'll then be presented with a list of programs which are set to start when you turn on your computer. If you see any apps that you don't want as part of your startup sequence, then it's very easy to remove them. Simply right click on the relevant app, then select the Disable option from the pop up menu. |  |
Step 5: Download a PC cleaner
| Even after all these steps, you may want to download a software that cleans your PC for you. There are many out there but not all of them are safe to use given the malicious nature of some rogue programs masquerading as useful tools. Here at Millennium, we recommend CCleaner, which you can download the latest version here for free. It removes all unwanted info like temporary files and dead directory links, web browsing histories and registry cleaning. |  |
