It happens to everyone. You buy a brand new computer, and the first
time you boot it up you're AMAZED at how fast it is. But then... a couple years or even months
go by, and before you know it, the computer struggles to run even basic programs. What happened? Well there are a lot of reasons why a computer
might slow down over time, but I've got a list of ten things you can do in Windows that
will hopefully get it running more like when you first bought it. And don't worry, these are are all simple
and free things you can do right now. Some of these might seem obvious, but others
may not. So let's go. First and foremost, clear out your startup
programs AND services. This has got to be the number one reason for
slow downs over time, because think about it. As time goes on and you install new programs,
many of them make themselves start up with windows. And if you don't close them, you'll have an
ever-increasing number of programs just running in the background taking up resources. But don't think that just because you don't
see many programs in the taskbar that there aren't many programs running in the background. In Windows 8 and 10, you can open up the task
manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc, and going to the Startup tab to see ALL the programs
that start up with windows. In Windows 7 and earlier, go to the start
menu and run "msconfig" Right click and disable any that you don't immediately need all the
time. You can obviously just manually run them whenever
you want, but they don't need to start up. Now here's where most people screw up. Because the startup tab is not the end of
the story. Because many programs install what are called
"services", which are still programs that run in the background, but you never see them. So number two is to go through these startup
services and disable any of those you don't need as well. You can do this by going to the start menu
and running "Services.msc". You'll get a list of all the services, and
any that say "automatic" will start with Windows. What you can do is right click them, and change
startup type to "manual", so they'll only run when the program starts. Keep in mind that you SHOULD be more cautious
when disabling these, especially for programs that aren't necessarily manually run by you. So for example disabling the printer service
might cause trouble next time you go to print. So only disable services that you know you
don't need running in the background. This is also great for programs that you see
starting up all the time, but you can't find it in the startup list. It's probably actually a service. Now quickly, kind of as a number "2.5", this
is pretty common sense and goes off one and two, but uninstall any unused programs. This will free up hard drive space, and remove
startup junk without having to go through the whole list of startup programs and services
trying to figure out what each one does. Alright number three, another simple one you're
hopefully already doing, is scanning for malware and viruses. If your computer is always running slow for
no apparent reason, it's possible there are hidden malicious software running in the background,
doing anything from showing you ads to using your computer resources in a bot net. Now there are both free and paid antivirus
options, and free versions of paid ones. These include Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, and
Malwarebytes. For paid programs, I personally use Eset Smart
Security, and I've been happy with it. Even if your computer isn't running slow though,
you should have some sort of antivirus on your computer, for reasons I've covered in
plenty of other videos. Ok number four is quick and easy, and that's
disabling windows animations. One of the ways you can do this is to go to
the Ease of Access settings window, and check "Turn off all unecessary animations when possible". You can also to Control Panel > System > Advanced
System Settings > Performance Settings, and adjust which animations to use. You can select for best performance which
will disable all of them, or pick and choose. This will probably make the biggest difference
on low power computers. Next, number five is keep all your software
up to date. This includes Windows itself, your graphics
drivers, and anything else you use regularly. They are frequently releasing new updates
that optimize for performance, as well as improve security. Plus, it's just good practice. Number six. Check your power settings! Especially on laptops, the default may be
to have it set to "balanced" or even "power saver", which are good for conserving battery,
but will also slow down your computer considerably. Instead, you may want to change it to High
Performance, definitely if you're on a desktop, and on a laptop maybe only when you're plugged
in. I learned this the hard way a couple years
back when I got a brand new laptop that was supposed to be really high end. But when I got it, it was SO slow, I couldn't
figure out why. After several days, I finally realized it
was on power saver mode, and when I switched it to high performance, THEN it was lightning
fast. So be sure to check that. Ok now we're going to get slightly more technical
but don't worry. So number seven is check your hard disk for
errors. You can do this in a couple ways. First, you can check the hard drive's reported
health by going to the command prompt, so start menu, type CMD. Then typing in "WMIC", and then "diskdrive
get status". If they all say OK, one for each drive, it
means that there are no immediate serious errors that it thinks at least. If it says something other than OK, then one
of your drives could be having issues and you should REPLACE IT. The other way to check for drive errors is
to go to command prompt and run the Check Disk command, by typing "CHKDSK /f", which
will search for and try to repair errors on your drive. If you consistently get a lot of errors, again
that may mean your drive is failing. This is why you always want to back up. ALWAYS! Number eight. Check the Windows File Integrity. Back at the good old command prompt, type
in "SFC /scannow" to run the system file checker, and it will try and find any system files
that are missing or corrupted and try to repair them. Now there are a ton of possibilities for error
messages it could spit back at you, so if you get one, you'll just have to Google it
yourself ok? I am not going to help everyone with every
random error they get, because I wouldn't know what they are without looking them up
either. Next on to number nine. Check for memory errors. If you have bad memory, it can cause ALL sorts
of weird problems that you might never guess has to do with your RAM. To do this go to the start menu and search
for "Windows Memory Diagnostic". Now careful, don't click "Restart Now" unless
you actually want to restart this second. You probably would rather check on next startup,
and restart whenever you want. After you restart it should just start automatically
and tell you if anything comes up. Or if you want to get advanced you can press
"F1" to change the test settings, but that's not really necessary. If you get a lot of errors it could mean that
your RAM isn't seated properly, or one of the sticks is faulty and needs to be replaced. If the RAM is actually bad, replacing it is
really the only option. And alright finally for the free options,
though there are a couple non-free things I'll mention in a second after. So number ten is to just nuke it and start
over. Reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows
altogether. This is obviously the most extreme option,
but if you have consistant issues that you can't seem to fix no matter what, a fresh
installation of windows is often the best way to go. Explaining how to reformat and reinstall windows
is way beyond the scope of this video, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about
then it's probably NOT something you should do. But this list would not be complete without
it. So next are a couple bonus options, but these
involve actually buying new hardware, so they are not free. First, you can buy an SSD to replace your
main hard drive. Sure you could get a small one and just boot
Windows off it, but SSDs are much cheaper today to get a big one. Let me just tell you, there is probably nothing
that will make your computer run faster than getting an SSD. Of course assuming the rest of your computer
isn't ancient. And once you get one, you'll never want to
go back. The other thing you can do is MAYBE buy more
memory, depending on how much you have now. If you have 8GB of RAM or less, and you do
more than just check your emails and type up word documents, you could probably benefit
from getting more. However, I definitely think it would be much
more beneficial to get an SSD first. And no, unfortunately you cannot just download
more RAM, as awesome as that would be. So I think that just about sums it all up,
those should be the some great things to try if your computer is running slower than it
should be. If I did forget anything though be sure to
let me know, so leave a comment maybe with any tips you think would be helpful too. And if you guys liked this video be sure to
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you guys, so thanks for watching, I'll see you next time, have a good one.
