62 |^ |^ May 2019
B
eneath the surface of
Windows lies a seething
mass of programs,
services and other
system files all
competing for a share of
finite resources. It doesn’t matter how
many cores your processor has, how
much RAM you stuff into your PC or
whether you switch to an uber-fast
solid-state drive (SSD), your PC finds a
way of gobbling up everything you
throw at it. In this section, we’re going
to show you how to rein it in.Tame star tup
The problems begin the moment
Windows appears to have finished
loading. If your computer had a stomach
it would be doubled over with
indigestion the way start-up programs
and services start demanding attention
even before you have managed to log
into your user account.
In the October 2017 issue we took a
look at BootRacer (www.greatis.com/
bootracer), a tool for monitoring and
improving the boot times of your PC. It
also includes Startup Control, a handy
tool which delays start-up items until
Windows has finished loading itself,
then lets you see exactly how long each
item takes to load. Not only can you
disable and delete start-up items, you
can swap their running order around
too – click Set Order on the main
Startup Control window and use thearrow keys to either side of a boot entry
to move it up and down the list.
If you want even more control over
startup, including viewing hidden parts
of the start-up process, download
Autoruns from https://docs.microsoft.
com/en-us/sysinternals/ – look under
Process Utilities. Unzip its contents and
run Autoruns.exe (32-bit) or Autoruns64.
exe (64-bit) by right-clicking it and
choosing ‘Run as administrator’.
You’ll see a bewildering number of
tabs appear – the Logon tab closely
resembles what’s shown by BootRacer,
but it also includes additional entries.Some tabs are – thankfully – empty but
focus your eye on Scheduled Tasks as
well as Explorer. Look for items marked
in red or yellow – try disabling theseImprove hardware performance
Looking for ways to tweak your
PC hardware? Start by making
sure you have the latest drivers
for key components, such as
your graphics card. If you’ve
been relying on Windows
Update to deliver these, try
visiting the manufacturer’s site
directly to see if a newer driver
is available. Alternatively, try a
driver-sourcing tool such as
IObit’s Driver Booster (www.
iobit.com – look under
Performance), which can do
all the grunt work for you.
One of the biggest
bottlenecks in your PC is its
hard drive. Type defrag into
the Search box and open the
‘Defragment and OptimiseDrives’ tool. This will enable
you to see if your SSD drives
are optimised and your
non-SSD drives defragged.
Ultimately, if you have an SSD
drive, there’s little you can do
to improve performance, and
most optimisations have
a negligible effect.
Non-SSD users might want
to try Defraggler (www.
piriform.com/defraggler)
instead of the default Windows
utility. Advantages include
being able to defrag individual
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plus the tool can defrag system
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the end of the drive to help
boost performance further.Streamline your PC
Find out how to get Windows back into something like the
shape it was in when you performed your last reinstall
Click ‘Customize’ to flag non-Windows processes
and services you’d like JetBoost to close.Defraggler provides you with more options for defragging your non-SSD
drives, potentially helping push performance that little bit further.Autoruns gives you the most comprehensive
overview of what’s starting up with Windows.