How to Improve Your PC Performance

I’m sure everyone has experienced this one way or the other; your perfectly fine computer lagging and slowing down so much you begin to lose your patience. Try opening an application and it might take a while to open. Your best guess is that it’s a virus and it was included in the free files you were downloading from a free website last week. My take on this is that it may not even be a virus and that you have files on your PC (not a virus) that are disrupting the proper functioning of your PC or simply settings that you have or haven’t activated. In this post, I’m going to take you through some steps that I came across by myself or online.

Temporary files (Temp)

Temporary files are files created by the system or apps in use to maintain proper functioning of the app. App setups also create temp files to move through the different phases of the installation. They should be deleted after the installation process or apps have been closed but that’s not the case sometimes.  According to Microsoft, clearing temporary files helps improve PC speed. As to how it does that, I’m not really sure, although I’ve come across articles that said it helped in increasing the speed of the creation of other temp files, hence improving performance. Here’s how to delete them. I’ve included a video at the end if this wasn’t clear for you (NB; For Windows 8 and 10)

• Right click on the Windows button

• Click on Run and type “temp” in the dialog box that shows asking for permission from the admin. Click on continue and wait for the files to load

• Select all items (Ctrl + A) and then right click on the mouse button
• Click on delete and skip files if they are currently running.

Power Options

Microsoft has a Power Options section that helps users monitor and control the power usage in the laptop or machine. This is a major way of increasing or improving PC performance or battery life depending on what you’re aiming at. Again, you can just go through the video or follow these steps

• Right-click on the Battery button on the task bar and click on “Power Options”

• In the list of options, select “High Performance” and click  on “Change plan settings”

• In the new window, click on Change advanced settings

• In the dialog box, scroll down to find Processor Power management and expand it

• Change the minimum and maximum processor states to 99% as shown in picture and video below (Not 100% because it may lead to overheating)

After this, you’ll notice a change in your processing speed. This helps a lot when it comes to gaming and other high processor dependent actions like screen recording. For apps or actions that don’t need much processing unit (like watching a video or using Word), you may leave it at PC recommended (usually Balanced).

Priority

This is another great way of allocating higher processing speed to certain apps or games that you’re using. This tells the system that whatever app you’re using is of top priority to you and therefore you need more processor attention. Here’s how to change the app priority.

• Right-click on the Windows button and click on Task manager. (Alternatively  you can use the keyboard combination (Ctrl + Alt + Del and then select Task Manager)
• In the new window, click on “More Options” at the bottom.

• The window expands with tabs and more processes. Click on the “Details” tab and look for the app you wish to work faster

• Right-click on the name of the app and hover your mouse on Set priority in the pop-up to open another pop-up menu
• Choose “High” and then click on Change priority in the dialog box

This post was becoming too long and so I’ve decided to split it into two parts. The second part would be up in a week. These steps worked for me and it was so evident since my laptop is running on a 2010 model processor. These and some other ways have helped me with a proper functioning with little heating, especially in gaming. Try these and let me know if they worked for you.

Watch video below.