Software & Apps Windows How to Make a Laptop Faster The best ways to speed up your old Windows 10 laptop by Dave Johnson Writer Dave Johnson has been writing about tech since 1990. He's the author of over 2 dozen books and his writing has appeared in Wired, PCWorld, Business Insider, and many other publications. our editorial process Twitter LinkedIn Dave Johnson Updated on February 16, 2021 reviewed by Jon Fisher Lifewire Tech Review Board Member Jonathan Fisher is a CompTIA certified technologist with more than 6 years' experience writing for publications like TechNorms and Help Desk Geek. our review board Article reviewed on Jan 11, 2021 Jon Fisher Tweet Share Email Windows The Ultimate Laptop Buying Guide What to Know 5 tips: Clean your hard drive, uninstall programs you don't need, reduce startup programs, scan for malware and/or reset Windows.You don't need to replace that laptop; a bit of maintenance can go a long way toward improving performance. This article explains how to speed up your Windows 10 laptop and restore it to the performance it had when it was new, rather than replacing it with a new laptop. Clean Your Hard Drive You should start by removing unimportant data and cached files from your disk since this is the easiest, most painless way to gain some performance back. Over time, your hard drive fills up with temporary files that can slow down your computer's ability to access the hard drive. In the search box to the right of the Start button, type Cleanup and then click Disk Cleanup when you see it appear in the search results. In the Disk Cleanup dialog box, be sure the C drive is selected and click OK. Check all the boxes and click OK. Then press Delete Files to confirm and start the deletion process. Uninstall Programs You Don't Need After you clean up your hard drive, the next step is to remove programs you don't need. Not only do installed programs take up valuable storage space on your hard drive, but they can often run processes in the background which slow things down. If you don't know what a program does, look it up online to see if it's something you still need. As a general rule, if you don't know what a program does, you don't need it and can remove it, because Windows won't let you uninstall any programs that are critical to Windows itself. Third-party software uninstallers like IObit Uninstaller can help you find programs taking up the most space as well as infrequently used software. Click the Start button and then click the Settings icon (it's shaped like a gear). In the search box in the Settings window, type uninstall and then click Add or remove programs when you see it appear in the search results. Scroll through the list of programs at the bottom of the window. If you see a program you don't need, click it and select Uninstall. Then follow the instructions, if there are any, to remove the program. Usually, the app will simply uninstall on its own. When the uninstall is complete, Windows may ask permission to restart. If so, choose to do it later. Go back to the list of programs and continue to uninstall additional programs you don't need anymore. When you're done, restart your laptop. Reduce Startup Programs Many programs run automatically when you start your laptop and then run in the background. While this can be convenient and help certain programs run more efficiently, it also slows down your laptop overall. That's why you should reduce the number of apps that run at startup. Right-click a blank space in the taskbar and click Task Manager in the pop-up menu. In the Task Manager, click the Startup tab. This tab lists all the programs that run automatically at startup, and you probably have quite a few of them. You might not see this if you've never used Task Manager. Select More details to expand Task Manager first. You can sort these programs based on how much they affect your computer's startup speed by clicking Startup impact. This should sort them from High to Low. If you don't know what a program does, right-click and choose Search Online. Windows will open a web browser and show you results for that app. It should generally be easy to see how important it is for that program to run at startup and what the impact of disabling it will be. For every program that doesn't need to run at startup, right-click and choose Disable. Scan for Malware While somewhat unlikely, it's possible your laptop is infected with some form of malware that's slowing down your computer. To be sure, check for the presence of malware. Click Start and then click Settings. In the Settings window, click Update & Security. In the navigation pane on the left, click Windows Security. You should see the security status of your laptop. Click Virus & threat protection and click Quick scan. Let the scan run. If your computer finds any threats, follow the instructions to deal with it. Reset Windows Sometimes, a laptop's Windows installation is simply too corrupted or cluttered with digital detritus for any of the above solutions to solve the problem. There's one last option available: You can start fresh with a clean installation of Windows. This is always a last resort because it's time-consuming and there is some small amount of risk involved. It's a good idea to have a reliable backup of your data in case anything goes awry. Windows is designed to let you reset your installation of windows back to factory conditions without damaging or deleting your personal data, but be aware that if you do this, Windows will remove third-party programs that you'll need to reinstall yourself. Click Start and then click Settings. In the search box at the top of the Settings window, type Reset. Click Reset this PC when you see it appear in the search results. In the Reset this PC section, click Get started. Click Keep my files and follow the directions to let Windows reset itself. The process may take some time, but when you're done you should be left with a computer which runs as quickly as when it was brand new. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. Thank you for signing up. Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit