Right-click the desktop. Select “Personalize”. Select “Colors”. Disable “Make Start, taskbar, and action center transparent”.

Right-click the Start button. Click “Task Manager” Click “Startup” Select the program you want to turn off. Click “Disable”.

Right-click the Start button. Click “Task Manager”. Click “Services”. Right-click the service you wish to disable. Select “Stop”.

Choose “System” Click “Advanced system settings”. Click the “Advanced” tab. Under “Performance”, click the “Settings” button. Click “Adjust for best performance”. You can also manually disable each effect. Alternatively, go to Settings > Ease of Access > Other Options. Once here, you can turn off animations.

Right-click the Start button. Go to “Control Panel”. Choose “System and Security”. Click “Power Options”. Click “Choose what the power buttons do”. Click “Turn on fast startup”. You will find this under Shutdown settings. Click “Save changes”.

Right-click the Start button. Click “Programs and Features”. Select the software you wish to remove. Click “Uninstall/Change”.

Click the Start button. Click “File Explorer”. Right-click Local Disk C:. Choose “Properties”. Click “Disk Cleanup”. You will find this under the “General” tab. Click “Unnecessary files Once you are done, click “OK”. Advanced users can avail the “Clean up system files” feature.

Click the Windows key. Type “System Performance Properties”. Click “Enter”. Uncheck the “Animate windows” box. Disable some other animations, if you so wish.

Right-click the desktop taskbar. Select “Task Manager”. Click “More details” in case wish to see the full interface. Apps using up a lot of resources will be highlighted.

Click on the battery icon. This is visible on the taskbar of your PC. Choose “More power options”. Select from three plans, namely, Balanced (this offers full performance and saves power while inactive), Power Saver (saves power by reducing system performance) and High Performance (maximizes performance and responsiveness). You can change your plan by clicking the Change Plan Settings link. To configure an Existing Plan, you can select/change the SLEEP and DISPLAY power plan settings. To create a Custom Plan, you have to go to the “Create a Power Plan” window. Give it a name and click “Next”. Then go about configuring your settings.

Click on Start. Type Indexing. Next, you will see the currently indexed locations. Click the Modify button. Uncheck the locations that you do not want indexed. To turn off indexing on a drive, open Computer and right-click on your local drive. On the General tab, uncheck the box that says, “Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed”. Choose all the folders and subfolders which you do not want indexed. Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Click on the Charms Bar. Click “Optimize Drives”. This will open a new dialog box, displaying the list of drives. Select a drive of your choice. Click on Optimize. This starts the defragmentation process. You can schedule this process to run automatically. Click Change Settings. Select the “Run on a Schedule” checkbox. Click OK to save your schedule.

Open the Start menu. In the Search box, type cleanmgr. Click the Cleanmgr program. Specify the drive you would like the program to clean up. Click OK. This will start the process.

Click the Start button. Click on “Control Panel”. Under “System and Security”, click “Find and Fix Problems”. Click “Check for performance issues”. A Performance Wizard window pops up. Click “Next” and wait for it to diagnose the problem. In the event that the troubleshooter recommends that you check programs to tweak PC performance, click “Next”. Clicking the “View detailed information” lets you access the detailed troubleshooting report. If you wish to close the wizard, you simply need to click “Close”.

Click the Start button. Click on “Control Panel”. Under “Programs”, click “Uninstall a program”. This will bring up a list of all your programs. Click the program you wish to remove and click “Uninstall”. You will find this tab on the top of the menu.

Press Win-r on the desktop. In the “Open” field, type msconfig. Press Enter. Click Startup. Uncheck the items which you do not want to launch at startup. Once you are done, click OK. In the popup box that appears next, click Restart. This will restart your computer, to finish the process.

Click the Start button. In the Search box, type Disk Defragmenter. Click Disk Defragmenter. Under Current status, select the disk you wish to defragment. Click Analyze disk. This will let you know if you need to defragment that particular disk. After Windows is done analyzing the disk, it shows you the percentage of fragmentation on the disk. If that number is above 10 percent, you should defragment the disk.

Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open the Task Manager. Click Processes. This will let you see the list of processes running on your PC. Scroll down to view the entire list of programs. Check the name and description of each program to identify it. Check the Memory column to see how much memory is being consumed by each process. Right-click on any active process and choose “End process”. This will close the program.

The Windows Action Center will usually notify you if you are running more than one antivirus program.