These 5 changes instantly made my Windows PC faster

by Edward Harper December 13, 2025

My PC wasn’t slow enough to justify new hardware, but it was sluggish enough to annoy me daily. A Windows PC can feel slow for reasons that have nothing to do with old hardware. In many cases, it’s the default system and the built-up clutter that quietly chip away at performance until everything feels heavier than it should.

The good news is that Windows gives you control over all of this. I tried a handful of tweaks with very low expectations, but they instantly improved my Windows PC's performance.

Optimize visual effects

Trim the glitter to keep the speed

Windows mainly offers two options for managing visual effects: best performance and best appearance.

As the name suggests, selecting the best appearance option enables attractive animations, effects, shadows, and transparency, improving the visual appeal of your system. However, these effects can impact your PC’s performance, especially on low-end computers.

To improve your Windows PC's responsiveness, you should optimize or turn off these extra animation effects. To adjust them, follow these steps:

Type “Performance” in Windows Search, and click on Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows.
Select Adjust for best performance if another option is selected there.

This will turn off additional effects but may reduce the visual appeal of your display. To strike a balance between appearance and performance, select Custom and manually toggle specific effects on or off.

Manage startup programs

Don't let apps throw a party at boot

Many apps automatically get permission to run at startup, either during installation or the first time you launch them. As the number of these startup apps increases, boot times slow down, making Windows take longer to be ready for use. To improve performance, you should disable unnecessary apps from launching at startup.

To disable startup programs, follow these steps:

Right-click the Start button and select Task Manager.
Go to the Startup apps tab, where you’ll see a list of programs that run at startup.
Right-click on any unnecessary programs and choose Disable.

Disable background applications

You probably don't need 30 apps lurking in the shadows

Many apps, especially third-party antivirus and password managers, are allowed to run in the background even when you're not actively using them. While this can occasionally be useful, having too many unnecessary apps running in the background can drain system resources, slowing down your computer’s performance.

To boost your system's performance, you should disable unnecessary background apps. Here's how you can do that:

Right-click the Start button and open Task Manager.
Go to the Processes tab.
Identify the resource-intensive processes in the Background processes column, right-click on them, and select End task.

By freeing up resources from background apps, your system will have more power to focus on essential tasks, ultimately improving performance. There are also a handful of Windows services you can disable to improve performance, but beware that some are core services that you shouldn't disable.

Adjust Power Settings

Can't ever have enough power

By default, Windows power settings are set to a balanced configuration, which offers a good mix of performance and energy efficiency.

This can help extend your laptop’s battery life. However, it also limits the amount of power Windows uses, affecting performance. To eliminate this restriction, switch to a high-performance power plan, allowing the hardware to operate at full capacity.

To adjust your power plan settings in Windows, follow these steps:

Type "Control Panel" in Windows Search and open the Control Panel app.
Go to Hardware and Sound > Power Options.
Select the High Performance plan if the Balanced plan is currently selected.
You can also click Change plan settings next to your selected plan to customize it further.

Enabling the high-performance plan will consume more battery, so keep your laptop plugged in during resource-intensive tasks. You can also create a custom power plan in the same window, but the customizations are pretty basic.

Force apps to use your dedicated GPU

Use the muscle you actually paid for

Even if you have a dedicated graphics card, some apps may still default to using the integrated GPU because they don't have permission to use the dedicated one. As a result, you may experience subpar performance since the more powerful GPU isn’t being utilized.

To get better performance, set your dedicated GPU for specific apps that require more resources.

Open Settings and go to System > Display.
Scroll down and click on Graphics.
Choose an app by clicking Browse (for desktop apps) or selecting a Microsoft Store app.
After adding the app, click it in the list, select Options, and choose High performance to assign the dedicated GPU.

Keep your PC fast with a little upkeep

If you haven’t made these tweaks before, give them a shot—you’ll feel the difference almost immediately. Windows runs smoother when you stop it from wasting power on animations, background clutter, and apps that launch without asking.

Just remember this isn’t a set-and-forget situation. New apps will sneak into your startup list, fresh background processes will appear, and anything GPU-heavy may still default to the weaker chip until you tell it otherwise. Keep an eye on these spots as you install new software, and your PC will stay fast long after the initial cleanup.