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Stop These 6 Windows Background Processes to Reclaim Your PC's Performance
Windows always has a ton of background processes running, and if you're trying to clear up some CPU space and increase your performance, it's hard to know what you can and can't afford to disable. Here are some Windows processes you can turn off without a care in the world in the Services app.
Windows Mobile Hotspot Service
I've been using Windows for more than 15 years now, and honestly, there are still a ton of features that I just don't notice because they literally never get used. For instance, I can't remember the last time I actually used my laptop as a hotspot for other devices, and I bet there are plenty of you readers in the same boat. The idea of using a laptop to provide Wi-Fi to a bunch of other devices sounds useful on paper, but it's usually unneeded.
First of all, for a laptop to be a useful hotspot to phones or tablets, it would need a SIM card and mobile data plan, and most of us don't have that kind of laptop. Moreover, how often are you in a situation where you can get Wi-Fi on your computer but not on your phone? With unlimited data becoming more and more common for mobile devices anyway, you don't even always need Wi-Fi for your mobile devices in the first place.
At any rate, if you never use your computer for a hotspot, you can turn off the Windows Mobile Hotspot Service without fear, freeing up some resources for your PC. To find this, and most of the other things we'll talk about in this article, just go into the search bar on the task bar at the bottom of your screen and type "Services." You'll have to look around for it in the next window, but everything should be alphabetized.
Program Compatibility Assist Service
Because Windows is pretty nifty, it allows you to run programs and applications that were designed for earlier versions of the OS. This can naturally lead to some complications from time to time, and there's where the Program Compatibility Assist Service comes in. It's there to give you warnings and potential fixes when there are such problems to worry about.
That said, this is only useful to you if you actually run really old software that wasn't designed for Windows 11. If you don't fit into that category, you can safely turn it off without any issue. I think it's safe to say that most people running Windows 11 are generally using programs and software designed for it.
That said, if you're a retro PC gamer, you might want to keep it on: there are some old PC games that might need it to run properly, especially if we're talking about old games that have never received any sort of support for newer OS. If you can find a game on Steam, it's probably fine, but if you have to dig out a CD-ROM or a game file from 2000, you might want to keep this particular Windows service, just in case.
Telemetry and Windows Error Reporting
If you don't touch any of your default settings with Windows, your PC will regularly send a lot of your data out to Microsoft, such as crash reports and usage patterns. It helps them, but doesn't really help you that much, and if you value your privacy, it's natural that you'd want something like this to go away.
The service itself is called Connected User Experiences and Telemetry. Turning this off does nothing to negatively impact your PC, it just stops it from sending a bunch of data back to Microsoft. The second service you might want to disable is Windows Error Reporting, which is the one that sends crash reports when an application goes wrong. These reports never really do anything to help you out, so you can turn it off and save yourself from PC performance if you want.
Windows Update Delivery Optimization
This one might sound important, but it's actually a not that big of a deal for most people. This doesn't speed up updates on your PC, it speeds up updates on other devices that are connected to your local network by sharing files with them. On paper, it sounds like a good idea, but exactly how many PCs do you have on your local network anyway? This service can slow down your PC at seemingly random times with no warning.
If you want to turn this off, just go to Settings > Windows Update > Advanced Options > Delivery Optimization and turn off "Allow downloads from other devices."
SysMain
This used to be known as Superfetch, and it's supposed to speed up app loading times by preloading the ones you use often into the PC's memory. For example, if you do always open Steam or Discord every day, SysMain will have them preloaded and ready to go so they load faster. As usual, this sounds really great in theory, but can easily backfire on you in practice.
There are a few problems to address. First of all, with modern day SSDs, preloading an application like this really doesn't even offer much of an increase in speed. SSDs are already fast as it is. Even if you don't have an SSD, SysMain is constantly analyzing your app usage and playing around with the priorities, easily eating up performance that doesn't need to be wasted. It's especially noticeable on PCs with less RAM and smaller hard drives.
All in all, while it sounds pretty cool, you don't actually need SysMain in practice.
General Third-Party App Services That go Unused
There are a lot of things to download on the internet. Some of them are useful. A whole lot of them aren't. Ideally, everyone would be sure to delete apps and programs they no longer use after they've been downloaded, but everyone forgets to do that sometimes. There are all sorts of third-party apps that can be downloaded with background processes that eat up PC performance. Printer software, graphics tools, cloud storage sync apps: I'm not saying some of these aren't useful, but only if you're actually using them.
You should clean up these programs that might be chewing up your performance, but since they are third-party, you won't find them in the Services app. Instead, press Win+R to open the Run dialog box, type "msconfig", and hit Enter. You can also search "System Configuration" in your task bar search bar.
In the next window, go to the "Services" tab and turn on "Hide all Microsoft services". Now you can run through a list of third-party programs, select the ones you want to turn off, and easily disable them. Of course, if it turns out that you actually want them back later, you can just repeat this process and turn what you want back on without much trouble. Just follow the same steps to get to these options that you used the first time.
Well, there you have it. Don't go around turning off anything you can find in your PC willy-nilly, but the things I've listed here today are all perfectly safe to disable, so long as you personally don't want whatever it is those services offer. While faster, more powerful PCs might not notice a huge change, slower models may see significant improvements in their performance by cutting out these things you just don't really need.