Top 10 Things That Will Speed Up Windows Today

Here are 10 things you can do to begin optimizing your system today. These are in no particular order but by doing just some of these you’ll begin to see a noticeable improvement in system performance. Click through the links to go to more in depth information on each item.

Each tip will has a brief how-to. If you follow-the links you will be taken to a more in-depth discussion of each topic.

1. Defragment your hard drive.

Windows has built in disk defrag software. Go to the Control Panel->Administration Tools->Computer Management applet. When the applet opens look for the Disk Defragment option. Click it, select which disk you want to defragment and then press the Defragment Button.

2. Cleanup your Start menu

If your Windows Start Menu has too many top level program folders than it will take longer for Windows to draw the Start Menu. This results in a rather unresponsive Start Menu. Group your software and shortcuts into a better hierarchy and your Start Menu will open more quickly.

3. Uninstall old applications

Uninstalling old applications will free up disk space, shrink the registry, and possibly stop unused start up programs and services. If you haven’t used certain software in a while, remove them.

4. Turn off unused services
5. Disable your themes

Right click on your Desktop and select Properties from your menu. On the Themes tab, change your theme to Windows classic.

6. Install Firefox

Firefox is gaining market share each day. This is because it’s a faster browser and offers better security over Internet explorer. If you install it through the bundled download from Google, you also get a great pop-up blocker for free.

7. Clean your registry

A clean registry goes a long way to improving performance but leave this to the experts. Get a good registry cleaner tool to do the job.

8. Keep your drivers up to date
9. Buy more RAM

RAM is cheap these days. Doubling the size of your RAM is a great way to improve your disk performance. Check New Egg or Pricewatch for great prices on RAM.

10. Move your swap file
11. Bonus Clean-up your desktop.

I would suggest dumping all of your desktop items into a single folder that you can view when you need to. It will reduce eye clutter and minimize the work Windows needs to do to refresh your display.

I’ll probably re-publish this as the Top 20 things in a few months. Subscribe to our newsletter or RSS feed to keep yourself up to date.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve your Windows performance. Post them here.