TIP: How to dramatically speed up a slow Windows 11 PC without spending anything - the settings most people have never changed

[Anchor99]

Most slow Windows 11 machines are not slow because of hardware. They are slow because of default settings that favour features over speed. Here are the changes that make the biggest real world difference.

Disable startup programs in Task Manager, Startup Apps tab. Sort by startup impact and disable everything that is not essential. This single change can reduce boot time by 30 to 60 seconds on a cluttered machine.

Change the power plan. Search for Power Options, select Balanced or High Performance. Windows 11 often defaults to Power Saver which throttles the CPU aggressively.

Disable visual effects. Search for Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows, select Adjust for best performance, then manually re-enable Smooth edges of screen fonts and Show thumbnails instead of icons so it does not look completely bare.

Turn off Search indexing for drives you do not search. Right-click a drive, Properties, uncheck Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed.

Enable Storage Sense to automatically clear temp files and old Windows update files. Settings, System, Storage, Storage Sense

[Sequence87]

The startup programs tip alone fixed a machine I was about to reformat. It had 23 startup entries including three different updaters for software I barely use

[Kev94]

The power plan change is the one that makes the biggest immediate difference on laptops. Windows defaulting to Power Saver on battery is reasonable but on plugged-in desktops it is just throttling your CPU for no benefit

[Baz_26]

Storage Sense is underused. I have seen machines with 40GB of old Windows Update files sitting in SoftwareDistribution that Storage Sense clears in minutes

[Andy81]

The visual effects tip is worth expanding on: Smooth edges of screen fonts is the one to keep enabled because text looks terrible without it. Everything else can safely be turned off on slower machines

[Coastal Estuary]

Disabling Cortana from the startup if it is there is another one. It uses RAM continuously even when you never use it

[TeddyWhelan]

I would add: check your antivirus scheduled scan time. If it defaults to running during work hours it will hammer performance. Move it to 3am

[Northernah]

The indexing change is the one that helped my older spinning disk machine the most. Constant background indexing on an HDD is brutal for performance

[Dean95]

For anyone whose machine is on a domain at work: Group Policy may be overriding some of these settings. Worth knowing why a change does not stick

[LurkingLegend]

Run msconfig and check the Services tab for anything unexpected running as a service. Some software installs services that run permanently and are invisible in Task Manager's startup tab