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Stop restarting your PC and change these 5 Windows settings instead
If your PC has been feeling slow lately, you've probably already tried the obvious restart fix. Sometimes that works for a while, but the same slowdown creeps back within days. There are a few things you can do that go beyond random online tips. I have done these, and they work really well.
Disable Windows Fast Startup
It saves you seconds but costs you so much more
Fast Startup has been around since Windows 8, and its job is to make your PC boot faster. The way it does this is a bit sneaky, because it closes your apps and logs you out like normal, but it doesn't actually power down the core operating system. Instead, it saves the kernel along with all your loaded drivers.
Next time you press the power button, Windows skips the full hardware startup routine and just reloads everything from that file. It's essentially hibernation dressed up as a shutdown.
That shortcut comes with a real downside, because it also saves anything that went wrong before you shut down. So memory leaks, driver issues, hardware conflicts, or degraded performance don't get fixed.
This also causes issues with Windows updates, which need a complete restart to install properly. If you're running a dual-boot setup or using full-disk encryption, the fact that Windows leaves the drive in a locked hibernation state can cause serious compatibility problems.
It's not worth it just to load up a few seconds faster. To turn it off, open the Control Panel and then Power Options. From there, pick "Choose what the power buttons do," then Change settings that are currently unavailable," and turn off "Turn on fast startup."
Once you save that change, shutting down your PC will actually mean shutting it down.
Turn off background app permissions
Not every app needs to stay on
Older Windows programs used to be either open or closed, but modern built-in Windows apps work differently under the hood. Even after you minimize them or switch to another window, they don't actually shut down. Many apps hang around in the background, eating up memory and processor resources without you realizing it.
Windows manages this through a feature called the Process Lifecycle Manager. This basically changes apps between actively running, suspended, or fully stopped. When an app gets suspended, its main activity pauses, but Windows still lets it run small background tasks that listen for things like network changes, notifications, and system timers.
The app's data stays loaded in your RAM the whole time. All of this adds up and slows down your computer. You can restart your PC, which clears everything out. For a longer-lasting solution, just tell Windows to stop letting these apps run in the background at all.
Open Settings, go to Apps, Installed Apps, and click the three-dot menu next to any built-in app you rarely use. From there, just select Advanced Options and set the background apps permission dropdown to Never.
Clear your Delivery Optimization cache
Always clear caches
Windows Delivery Optimization is a built-in feature that turns your PC into part of a peer-to-peer network for downloading Windows Updates and Microsoft Store apps. Instead of pulling every update directly from Microsoft's servers, your computer can grab pieces of those updates from nearby machines on your local network or other peers online and share them back out in return. This saves internet bandwidth and speeds things up.
The catch is that all those cached update fragments take up space on your hard drive, and they build up over time. This could end up being gigabytes. Restarting the computer won't fix this one.
When your drive starts filling up, everything slows down. Windows needs free space to write files, run background tasks, and manage virtual memory. This can slow your PC down, so you have to make sure to regularly clean it.
Open the Settings, go to System, and then Storage. From there, pick Temporary Files and check the box for Delivery Optimization Files. After that, click Remove Files, and you're good. You're likely going to see a lot of space open up immediately.
Turn off those Visual Effects
This is the most unnecessary feature
A newer computer looks better because it doesn't always let apps draw directly to your screen. Instead, it gives every open window its own chunk of graphics memory, then stitches everything together into one image before you see it. That's what powers the frosted glass effects, the animated transitions, and the little thumbnails when you hover over the taskbar.
Those touches make Windows look cooler, but they come at a cost. Your CPU and GPU are quietly working to maintain all of it in the background. Over a long session, that adds up, and you start noticing stutters, input lag, and a general feeling that the computer is dragging.
You can cut out most of that overhead by turning off the visual effects entirely. You really don't need them, and I've never noticed that they were gone after changing this.
Type "advanced system settings" into the Windows search bar and hit the Settings button under the Performance section. Then choose Adjust for best performance and click Apply.
Disable Virtualization-Based Security Core Isolation
You're not getting hit by hackers this determined
Virtualization-based security and its Core Isolation features are a big part of how Windows defends against malware; there's no arguing against that. Running that extra layer comes with a real processing cost that can noticeably hurt performance in demanding tasks.
The problem is that all that hardware-level policing makes things harder for your CPU. To keep that strict memory isolation, the hypervisor relies heavily on Second Level Address Translation, which adds a second layer of nested page tables underneath the OS's normal memory translation process. All that security is nice, but you really don't need it.
If you need every bit of hardware responsiveness, disabling Memory Integrity to cut that overhead is usually worth it. Yes, it brings your security boundary back down to standard Ring 0 controls, but it completely removes the nested virtualization delays that are holding your hardware back.
To turn it off, open the Windows Security app, click Device Security, select Core Isolation details, and toggle Memory Integrity off. After saving and restarting, you should be good.
Make judgment calls on which to use
Most of these changes need a few trade-offs. Use your best judgment on those. Trading a layer of kernel-level protection for better frame pacing and input responsiveness makes sense for a dedicated gaming machine, but it might not be wise for a PC you also use for work or banking. The other changes; clearing the Delivery Optimization cache, turning off Fast Startup, cutting background app permissions, and stripping visual effects, carry almost no downside.
