Best Ways to Speed up laptop

This is probably not the best idea if you’re trying to save up on your electricity bill, but it can noticeably improve your PC’s computing speed.

To change your power settings, go to the Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options. Of the three options you see on the screen, choose “High Performance,” and you’re set. 

You’d be surprised to know how exposed you are to malware while surfing the web, whether it is infected attachments in your e-mail or watering hole attacks. What’s interesting is that malware doesn’t instantly render your PC or laptop unusable, but just hangs around in the system, often for years – stealing information and data.

Unfortunately, it also slows your computer down. What’s worse, it can be challenging to determine if malware is the cause of your laptop's slow performance.

However, once you identify the issue, the fix is rather simple. Generally, a good antivirus program can scan through your computer, identify potential threats, and eliminate them. 

Invest in additional RAM to power up your old systems. RAM upgrades, though becoming rarer by the day, are still very capable of boosting your PC’s speed. They don’t put a deep hole in your pockets either. You can easily get an 8GB DDR4 RAM for a little over $55. 

If you're working on a laptop with 4GB RAM, your fault might be the hardware. 4GB RAM in 2021 just isn't enough to cut it. 8GB is pretty much the bare minimum you need to have a decently functioning laptop. If your budget allows it, go for 16GB. Most laptops do offer enough room for upgradability to go from 4GB of RAM to 16GB. However, if you have a laptop that has soldered RAM chips with no option for extra sticks, you're going to have to get a new laptop if you want a decent experience.

Viruses can often make the P.C slow. To boost the P.C, download and install a Virus scanner on your P.C. Many virus scanners are free and provide adequate protection so download one that works for you. Scan files before downloading them from the internet. Also, scan external hard drives and USB drives before transferring data.

When you start up your laptop, a bunch of apps are set to automatically start with it. Software manufacturers set their programs to run in the background even though you cannot see any windows open. This may be useful for programs that you use a lot, but not so much if you hardly ever use them. These programs run in the background and take up valuable resources that may result in a slow functioning laptop.

If you want to disable these, just pull up the task manager and head to the start-up tab. Disable the programs you don’t think are necessary. Earlier, this was done by running the ‘msconfig’ utility. So, if you are on Windows 7 or earlier programs, that’s how you can accomplish the same thing.

A lot of programs install processes that automatically startup with the PC, even though you don’t need those processes to be running all the time. The MSCONFIG utility took care of the startup programs on Windows 7 and earlier, but you can now just use the updated task manager on Windows 10 (or Windows 8+) to restrict these processes from starting up automatically.

It’s a simple process. You launch the task manager and switch over to the “Startup” tab. Under this tab, you’ll see the list of programs that are set to load at startup. Just right click the ones you want to disable and change their current status. 

Visual effects are resource-intensive. Essentially, there is a tug of war between performance and appearance. It’s up to you to decide whether you want your Windows OS to look nice or work fast.

To optimize your visual effects, head to Control Panel and search for 'Performance Information and Tools'. Next, look for 'Adjust visual effects' and click on it. There, select 'Adjust for best performance', and click OK. Alternatively, you also have the option to let Windows decide what's best.

If you are using an old mechanical drive, it may suffer from fragmentation and cause your laptop to run slow. Fragmentation is caused by a file’s bits being scattered across the drive platter’s physical surface. When you use these files, the drive head’s work becomes laborious because it has to travel all over the surface to read the files.

Defragmenting helps restructure the disk such that the bits forming the files are grouped in a physically close location on the surface.

You could also switch to SSDs, however, because they don’t use spinning-platter disks and are therefore immune to fragmentation. 

Viruses and other malware can slowly decrease the processing speed of your P.C. Also, if your P.C has a lot of cache, apps, and junk files, your P.C will be automatically getting slower day by day. The best and proper fix for this problem is to re-install windows or the O.S you are using. Back-up your files on an online drive or transfer them on a physical drive. You can do both for extra protection. Uninstall and delete the previous windows. Install new windows and the P.C should not be slower. 

Fragmentation is one of the best ways to speed up your laptop. A lot of times, hard drives are forced to do additional work for the operating system that just slows down the tasks you actually want to do. A quick workaround to this is fragmentation. This tool rearranges fragmented data so the hard disk can function efficiently. However, if you're using an SSD, don't defragment it. Doing this on a hard drive is helpful. But, fragmentation on an SSD takes a chunk off its health. Every time you run it, it takes several days off the total lifetime of the disk.