Programs to speed up your Windows 8.1 computer. Removing programs from startup

29.06.2020

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Evaluating the performance of a computer or laptop running Windows 7 was not difficult. All you had to do was launch the “System” control panel applet and click the “Windows Experience Index” button.

In Windows 8, this button disappeared: the developers decided to remove WinSAT, a performance assessment utility from the set of system tools, because it did not live up to their expectations (the utility was intended to make it easier to select programs based on the capabilities of the computer). And since many users considered it an ordinary benchmark and almost never used it for its intended purpose, Microsoft decided that it was not needed at all.

To the delight of those who consider PC performance assessment a necessary and useful function, something remains in the system: the developers removed only the WinSAT graphical shell without touching the program code. This means that it is possible to run it in the command line or PowerShell console.

Assess Windows Performance Using the Command Line

Open the context menu of the “Windows” button (in place of the former “Start” button) and click “Command Prompt (Admin)”.

Enter the command into the console window WinSAT.exe prepop. Press Enter. This action will run a system performance assessment.

Wait until the utility finishes running (the last item shows the total evaluation time) and close the window.

Next go to the folder C:WindowsPerformanceWinSATDataStore and open using a browser, for example, Internet Explorer, the file “ Current_date_Formal.Assessment (Initial).WinSAT.xml“.

Find a tag and look at the information inside it - this is an assessment of the performance of your PC components.

What do these entries mean:

SystemScore 5.2 – general assessment of system performance. As before, it is determined by the indicator of the weakest node (in my case, this is the hard drive). Unlike the “seven”, where the maximum score was 7.9, in the “eight” the highest score was 9.9.
MemoryScore 7.6 – memory performance assessment.
CpuScore 7.6 – processor rating.
CPUSubAggScore 7.8 – additional processor rating (not indicated in the graphical version of WinSAT).
VideoEncodeScore 7.4 – video encoding speed rating (not indicated in the graphical version of WinSAT).
GraphicsScore 7.6 – evaluation of video card performance.
Dx9SubScore 7.6 – performance of video games using directx 9.
Dx10SubScore 0 – performance of video games using directx 10 (in this case this parameter was not tested).
GamingScore 7.6 – overall gaming performance.
DiskScore 5.2– system hard drive performance.

Assessing Windows Performance Using PowerShell

The next way to find out an estimate of computer speed is more convenient and faster. It uses the PowerShell console, in which the result will be displayed.

PowerShell also needs to be run as administrator. This can be done through search and the Start menu.

To launch PowerShell via search:

Open the Charms panel (drag your mouse from the top right corner of the screen down a little) and click the “Search” icon.

Or go to the context menu of the “Windows” button and click “Find”.

Enter “PowerShell” in the search bar, click the search button, right-click on the found file and select “Run as administrator” from the menu.

To launch PowerShell from the Start menu:

Go to the Windows 8 Start screen and click the Down Arrow icon that appears when your cursor is at the bottom of the window. This will open a list of installed applications.

Windows PowerShell is in the Utilities category. Right-click on the icon and also select run as administrator from the menu.

WSat utility - graphical interface for assessing PC performance

Those who do not like any of the above methods can use the free graphical utility WSat, created by A. Leushin. It does not require installation and immediately after launch it shows what it is intended for - an assessment of your PC.

Clicking the “three dots” button will expand an additional window with information about the computer.

How to increase the performance of Windows 8?

“Eight” is a fairly fast system. Compared to all previous operating systems, it loads much faster and also consumes less RAM than Windows 7. To improve the performance of a PC or laptop with Windows 8, Microsoft advises doing three things:

Disable visual effects:

In the Windows 8 properties window, click “Advanced system settings.”

Go to the “Advanced” tab and in the “Performance” section, click “Options”.

A common phenomenon is that the computer begins to slow down, Windows takes ten minutes to start, and in order to wait for the browser to open you need to have good patience. In this article, we'll talk about the easiest ways to speed up your computer running Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and 7.

The instructions are intended primarily for novice users who have not previously thought about how various MediaGet, Zona, Mail.Ru agent or other software affect the speed of operation, and like to install numerous programs that speed up the computer or are designed to clean it. But of course, these are not the only possible reasons for a slow computer that I will discuss here. Anyway, let's get started.

The first and main reason why a computer takes a long time to boot (that is, until the moment when you can finally launch something in Windows), and also runs wildly slowly for novice users, is the huge number of different programs that start automatically when Windows starts. The user may even know about them, but consider them necessary and not attach much importance to them. However, even a modern PC with a bunch of processor cores and a significant amount of RAM can begin to seriously slow down if you do not monitor what exactly is in startup.

Almost all programs that start automatically when you log into Windows continue to run in the background during your session. However, not all of them are needed there. Typical examples of programs that should not be kept in startup if speed is important to you and you need to remove computer brakes:

Printer and scanner programs - if you print from Word and other document editors, scan through some of your own programs, the same Word or a graphics editor, then not all programs from printer, MFP or scanner manufacturers are not needed in startup - all necessary functions will work without them, and if you need any of these utilities, just run it from the list of installed programs.
Torrent clients - not everything is so simple here, but in general, if you don’t constantly have a lot of files to download, you don’t need to keep uTorrent or another client in startup: when you decide to download something, it will start on its own. The rest of the time, it interferes with work, constantly working with the hard drive and using traffic, which in total can have an undesirable effect on performance.
Computer cleaning utilities, USB scanners and other utility programs - if you have an antivirus installed, then it is enough in the list of automatically downloaded programs (and if not installed, install it). All other programs that are designed to speed up and protect everything at startup are not needed in the vast majority of cases.

To remove programs from startup, you can use standard OS tools. For example, in Windows 10 and Windows 8.1, you can right-click on “Start”, open the task manager, click the “More details” button (if displayed), and then go to the “Startup” tab and see what is there and there disable startup programs.

Many of the necessary programs that you install can automatically add themselves to the startup list: Skype, uTorrent and others. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. A slightly worse, but more common situation is when you quickly install the desired program by clicking the “Next” button, agree with all the “Recommended” items and, in addition to the program itself, purchase a certain amount of software junk that is distributed in this way. These are not viruses - just various software that you do not need, but still appears on your PC, starts automatically and sometimes is not so easy to remove (for example, all sorts of Mail.ru Sputnik).

Remove malware

Many users do not even realize that there is something wrong with their computer and they are unaware that it is slowing down due to the presence of malicious and potentially unwanted programs on it.

Many, even excellent, antiviruses do not pay attention to this kind of software. But you should pay attention to it if you are not satisfied with loading Windows and launching programs for several minutes.

The easiest way to quickly see if malware is causing your computer's slow performance is to run a scan using the free AdwCleaner or Malwarebytes Antimalware utilities and see what they find. In many cases, simply cleaning with these programs will significantly improve the apparent performance of the system.

Programs to speed up your computer

Many people are familiar with various kinds of programs that promise to speed up Windows. These include CCleaner, Auslogics Boostspeed, Razer Game Booster - there are many similar tools.

Is it worth using such programs? If I say about the last one that it’s probably not, then about the first two - yes, it’s worth it. But in the context of speeding up the computer, only in order to manually perform some of the points that were described above, namely:

Remove programs from startup
Remove unnecessary programs (for example, using the uninstaller in CCleaner)

And finally, programs that “speed up the computer” that are in startup and their work in the background lead to a decrease in performance, and not vice versa.

Remove all unnecessary programs

For the same reasons as described above, your computer may have a large number of completely unnecessary programs. In addition to those that were accidentally installed, downloaded from the Internet and long forgotten as unnecessary, the laptop may also contain programs that the manufacturer installed there. Don't think that all of them are necessary and useful: you don't need various McAfee, Office 2010 Click-to-Run and various other pre-installed software, except for what is intended directly for managing laptop hardware. And it is installed on the computer upon purchase only because the manufacturer receives money from the developer for it.

To see a list of installed programs, go to the Windows Control Panel and select Programs and Features. With this list you can remove everything you don't use. In some cases it is better to use special ones.

Update Windows and video card drivers

If you have licensed Windows, then I would recommend installing all updates automatically, which can be configured in Windows Update (although, by default, it is already installed there). If you continue to use an illegal copy, then I can only say that this is not the wisest choice. But you are unlikely to believe me. One way or another, in your case, updates, on the contrary, are undesirable.

Install SSD

If you're wondering whether to upgrade your RAM from 4GB to 8GB (or other options), buy a new graphics card, or do anything else to make your computer run faster, I strongly recommend that you buy an SSD drive instead of a regular hard drive.

You may have seen phrases like “SSD is the best thing that can happen to your computer” in publications. And today this is indeed the case; the increase in work speed will be obvious. More details - .

Unless you need an upgrade solely for games and in order to increase FPS, it would be more reasonable to purchase a new video card.

Clean your hard drive

Defragment your hard drive

Attention: I think this item is now outdated. Modern Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 defragment the hard drive in the background when you're not using the computer, but SSDs don't need defragmentation at all. On the other hand, the procedure will not harm.

If you have a regular hard drive (not an SSD) and a lot of time has passed since the system was installed, programs and files have been installed and uninstalled, then defragmenting the disk can speed up your computer a little. In order to use it, in the Explorer window, right-click on the system disk, select “Properties”, then the “Tools” tab, and on it click the “Defragmentation” button (“Optimize” in Windows 8). This process can take a long time, so you can run defragmentation before leaving for work or an educational institution and everything will be ready when you arrive.

Setting up the swap file

In some cases, it makes sense to configure the Windows paging file yourself. The most common of these cases is a laptop with 6-8 GB of RAM or more with an HDD (not SSD). Considering that hard drives on laptops are traditionally slow, in the described situation, to increase the speed of the laptop, you can try disabling the page file (with the exception of certain work scenarios - for example, professional photo and video editing).

Conclusion

So, the final list of what you can do to speed up your computer:

Remove all unnecessary programs from startup. Leave the antivirus and perhaps Skype or another communication program. Torrent clients, NVidia and ATI control panels, various bells and whistles included in Windows builds, programs for printers and scanners, cameras and phones with tablets - all this and much more is not needed in startup. The printer will work, KIES can be launched anyway, the torrent will start automatically if you decide to download something.
Remove all unnecessary programs. Not only startup software contains software that affects the speed of the computer. Numerous Yandex Defenders and Mail.ru Satellites, unnecessary programs that were pre-installed on the laptop, etc. - all this can also affect the speed of the computer, having system services running for its work and in other ways.
Update Windows and video card drivers.
Remove unnecessary files from your hard drive, free up more space on your system HDD. There is no point in storing terabytes of already watched movies and images with game discs locally.
Install an SSD if possible.
Configure the Windows swap file.
Defragment your hard drive. (unless it's an SSD).
Do not install multiple antiviruses. One antivirus and that’s it, don’t install additional “utilities for checking flash drives”, “anti-Trojans”, etc. Moreover, a second antivirus - in some cases this leads to the fact that the only way to make the computer work normally is to reinstall Windows.
Check your computer for viruses and malware.

1. Increase the speed of Aero Peek

Aero Peek is a useful feature that allows you to see the contents of your desktop by simply moving your cursor to the bottom right corner of the screen. By default, this feature operates with approximately a half-second delay. You can remove this delay to instantly show the desktop as soon as the cursor gets there.

Launch the registry editor with the command regedit.
Find a thread HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced.
On the right side, right click and create a key DWORD With name DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime.
Create a new decimal value for this key (value data) equal to 1 , which indicates that Aero Peek will have a delay of one millisecond.

2. The speed at which previews appear in the taskbar

You all know that when you hover the cursor over the icon of an open application, a pop-up window with a thumbnail image of it will appear in the taskbar. It appears very smoothly and slowly, which, although it looks impressive, can slow down your work. You can reduce the delay as follows.

Finding the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse.
In this key we find the value MouseHoverTime.
We correct this value from 400 to 1 (animation delay time in milliseconds).

3. Increase the speed of opening the context menu

By default, if there is another submenu in the context menu, then it opens with some delay after hovering the mouse cursor. You can easily remove this delay.

On the right side we find the value MenuShowDelay and right-click to change it.
We correct the value of this parameter to 1 , which means almost instant opening of the nested context menu.

4. Switch between windows using hover

IN Windows Ease of Access Center There is an option to enable the ability to switch between windows by simply hovering the mouse pointer, without any clicks. Many users may find this feature convenient. And to make it even more convenient, you can change the value of the waiting period before activating the window.

Run Regedit.exe and navigate to branch HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control\Desktop.
On the right side we see the value ActiveWndTrkTimeout and right-click on it.
We change the window activation time to one that is more comfortable for you. Time is indicated in milliseconds.

5. Disable unnecessary animation

The Windows operating system is simply crammed with various beautiful transitions, pop-up and fade-out windows, animation effects and other tinsel. However, not all users want to watch these beauties, especially since they take up system resources and time. Therefore, you can disable them.

Press the keyboard shortcut Win+R.
In the Run window that appears, enter sysdm.cpl and press Enter. The system properties window will open.
Now go to the tab Additionally and in the section Performance click the button Options.
In the window that opens, leave a checkmark next to the item Smoothing jagged screen fonts, and remove all the rest.

After reproducing the specified settings, your system may not look so chic, but it will work simply lightning fast.

What other ways to speed up Windows 8 can you recommend?

Over time, all Windows 8 users note that the laptop's performance has deteriorated significantly. This is caused by many different factors, for example, the accumulation of a large volume of temporary files, outdated registry entries, etc. Of course, the excessive number of different features on a Windows 8 PC hides a lot of system resources.

These include a special design of the start screen and a tiled animated interface, which make the system beautiful, but negatively affect the performance of the laptop as a whole. Therefore, the question of how to maximally speed up and optimize the operation of a laptop on the Windows 8 operating system should be approached in a comprehensive manner. Effective optimization of Windows 8 can only be achieved by implementing all of the measures listed below and together will result in a noticeable acceleration of the operating system.

How to improve productivity?

Some experts recommend increasing the speed of the system by reinstalling it annually. But installing the OS is a rather labor-intensive procedure and requires a significant amount of time. It is much more expedient to competently apply optimization and acceleration techniques for Windows 8. Many special applications have been created that partially solve the problem, but some of them often do only harm instead of good.

When performing manual methods, unfortunately, the human factor cannot be excluded; for example, inattentive execution of several steps can lead to negative consequences. In this regard, it is strongly recommended that before carrying out any actions related to optimizing Windows 8, you first create a restore point.

Activities to improve the performance of a Windows 8 laptop:

Turn off unused gadgets and various visual effects.

To do this, hold down the “Win” button, click on “E” and then in the window that appears, call up the context menu from “Computer”.

In the menu that appears, enter “Advanced system settings”.

Next, in the “System Properties” window that appears, go to the “Advanced” tab.

In the “Performance” section, click on “Options”.

In the menu that appears, go to the “Visual Effects” tab.

Next, to achieve maximum effect, it is recommended to check the box “Ensure the best performance.” In the case when the user needs to use certain effects, check “Special effects” and then indicate the lines he requires.

After finishing the procedure, click “Apply” and then “Ok” to save the parameters.

Increase the amount of virtual memory.

To do this, you need to enter the “Performance Options” menu using the algorithm of actions from the first stage of activities.

Specify the volume on the hard drive and determine the size of the paging file.

Note: the paging file cannot be located on the system partition “C”, and its volume must be made twice as large as the laptop’s RAM.

Having completed the procedure for saving the entered parameters, click “Apply” and then click “Ok”.

Restart the laptop.

Application of special modes.

Typically, all users work on their PC several times a day. In this case, it is more advisable to use hibernation or sleep mode instead of completely turning off the laptop. These two modes differ in that when the PC goes into hibernation, programs launched by the user are saved on the hard drive, and in sleep mode in RAM. PCs in the specified states of inactivity (standby) consume electricity in minimal quantities, but you can begin to fully continue working in almost a second, since a full OS load is not required and all previously opened user files will already be launched for work.

You need to call up the context menu from the laptop’s power icon and then click on the “Power Options” line.

Next, go to the “Action when closing the lid” section.

In the window that appears, enter the mode settings.

Click “Save Changes”.

Optimization of the list of applications that launch simultaneously with Windows startup.

Hold down "Win" and click "R" and type "msconfig".

Click “Ok”.

In the next window that appears, go to the “Startup” tab. In some versions of Eights, a list of applications that are in startup appears in this menu. You just need to uncheck those utilities that the owner rarely uses.

Having finished the procedure, click “Apply” and then “Ok” to save the entered adjustments.

Restart the laptop.

On some operating systems, you first need to click on “Open Task Manager”.

Then, in the window that appears, deactivate autorun applications.

Turn off indexing.

If the laptop owner does not use the search function, then disabling this service will significantly save system resources and greatly improve PC performance.

You need to hold down “Win”, click “E” and in the window that appears, call up the context menu from “Computer”.

Click on the “Manage” line.

In the window that appears, go to the “Services and Applications” section.

Enter the “Services” tab and double-click “Windows Search” in the list of services that appears.

To save the changes made, click “Apply” and then click “Ok”.

Activities to clean up memory and perform disk defragmentation.

Defragmentation can be performed either using built-in Windows tools or using specially developed utilities for this purpose, for example, Auslogics Disk Defrag.

To clear your memory of accumulated unnecessary files, it is recommended to use the CCleaner application, which has an intuitive interface and is distributed free of charge. The utility has stood the test of time and has earned numerous positive user reviews.

No matter how modern the operating system is, sooner or later almost all users encounter problems such as slow operation (compared to a “clean” system), as well as frequent crashes. And in such cases, I would like to make the computer work faster.

In this case, you can use special utilities. For example, Wise Care 365.

Using the Wise Care 365 program, you can not only make your computer faster, but also prevent most errors in the operation of the system itself. Now we will look at how to speed up a laptop with the Windows 8 operating system, however, the instructions described here are also suitable for speeding up other systems.

Before you start working with the program, you need to install it. To do this, download from the official website and run the installer.

Immediately after launch, the installer’s greetings will be displayed, after which we click the “Next” button and proceed to the next step.

Here we can read the license agreement and accept it (or reject it and not install this program).

The next step is to select a directory where all the necessary files will be copied.

The last step before installation is to confirm the settings made. To do this, just click the “Next” button. If you have incorrectly specified the folder for the program, you can use the “Back” button to return to the previous step.

Now all that remains is to wait until the system files are copied.

As soon as the installation is completed, the installer will offer to immediately launch the program.

Speeding up your computer

When starting the program, we will be asked to check the system. To do this, click the “Check” button and wait for the scanning to complete.

During the scan, Wise Care 365 will check your security settings, assess privacy risks, and analyze your operating system for erroneous registry references and unnecessary files that are just taking up disk space.

After the scan is completed, Wise Care 365 will not only display a list of all found faults, but also rate the condition of the computer on a 10-point scale.

To correct all errors and delete all unnecessary data, just click on the “Fix” button. After this, the program will eliminate the faults found using all the tools available to it in a complex. The highest PC health score will also be awarded.

To re-analyze the system, you can use the scan again. If you only need to perform optimization, or simply delete unnecessary files, in this case you can use the corresponding utilities separately.