Windows 10 is an operating system designed and maintained by Microsoft and is used almost exclusively for home computers and servers. It’s the most popular operating system in the world, with a market share of around 75%, meaning that the vast majority of people in the world use Windows as their default OS on their PC at home and work. It’s a powerful software suite that comes with a wide variety of tools for better productivity and for gaming, but it’s not completely infallible – there are endless reports of Windows becoming slow and impossible to use.
This is often either down to a bug in the code or simply a lack of user maintenance. Here we will look at the methods needed to ensure that Windows 10 is always working at its best.
Table of Contents
Perform Regular Updates
Windows 10 works on a type of update system called a “rolling release”, which means that every month Microsoft will push a set of updates to all of the devices that are running Windows 10. The rolling release means that your OS will always have the latest updates, including security patches, code fixes, and more.
If Windows does not get these updates on a regular basis, it may become unstable over time, especially if the device does not have an internet connection for months at a time. Windows 10 was designed from the start to always have access to regular updating, so for those that tend to travel a lot and can’t keep their Windows updated, it may be worth looking at a Linux alternative.
Perform Malware Scans
Almost all of the world’s malware is directed at Windows machines. This is largely because Windows is the most-commonly used operating system throughout the world and remains the biggest target for hackers. This means that it’s not that uncommon for a device running Windows to become infected and performing a scan may be necessary.
Fortunately, it’s no longer necessary to have proprietary software available to do the scans, as Microsoft’s Windows Defender anti-malware suite is now usually more than enough to keep most unsavoury software at bay. Keep in mind, however, that if a particularly bad piece of malware does infect your machine, it may be worth downloading a program such as Malwarebytes, giving you the chance to get back to your video streaming or slots Argentina in no time.
Run Hard Drive Defragmentations
Hard drives work by storing data at different points on the physical disk, and over time, especially as items are deleted, it can cause the drive to slow down. Windows 10 comes with a built-in disk defragmentation, meaning that it will clean up the disk and make it run faster. Having said this, it’s still worth investing in a solid state drive to use for the operating system, and keeping hard drives aside for storage purposes only.
Disable Startup Program
Startup programs are programs that automatically begin whenever Windows is started up. Depending on the program, they can significantly slow down Windows, adding extra time to an already slow process. It may be worth checking through this list one at a time and disabling any programs that you find you don’t use that often.