Mouse Settings
Go to Windows Control Panel -> Mouse, and set mouse sensitivity to the sixth notch. This means that per one “dot” your mouse moves, your pointer will move by 1 pixel. Also disable “Enhance Pointer Precision”, as it can mess up your aiming.
Limit Startup Processes
A lot of programs install side processes that run every time you start your PC, and some of them are not things you need running on your system all the time. Compared with Windows 7, in which you had to run the MSCONFIG utility, Windows 10 (and Windows 8.x before it) gives you an easier way to limit what runs at startup—from the updated Task Manager.
The easiest way to invoke the Task Manager is by pressing Ctrl-Shift-Esc. Switch to the Startup tab, and you’ll see all the programs that load at Windows startup. The dialog box even has a column that shows you the Startup impact for each. The Status column shows whether the program is enabled to run at startup or not. You can right-click on any entry to change this status. It’s usually fairly easy to see things you don’t want to run. For example, if you never use iTunes, you probably don’t need iTunesHelper running all the time.
Change Power Settings to High Performance to Optimize Speed
Of course, this isn’t a good choice if you want to save electricity, but it could boost your computing speed. Head to Control Panel > System and Security > Power Options. From here, click on the dropdown arrow on the right side to “Show additional plans” and then choose High Performance.
Change Appearance in Performance Options
You can easily get to this setting by typing adjust appearance in Cortana. In the dialog, you can use the radio button at the top labeled Adjust for best performance or select which eye-candy features you can live without from the long list of checkboxes below these choices. If you do choose the overall best-performance button, you’ll lose all of the visual effects. For example, you won’t see the contents of a window you’re dragging move, but rather just a rectangle representing the window’s edges. Keeping the effects that you enjoy checked in the dialog is probably a better way to go. You can also get to this tool from the new Settings app and searching for “maintenance” or “performance.”
Turn Off Search Indexing
Especially for lower-powered PCs, search indexing can eat up system resources, if only temporarily. If you do a lot of searching, this won’t appeal to you, as some searches will be slower. To turn off indexing, open the Indexing Options Control Panel window (you can also just type index in the Start button search box and you should see Indexing Options at the top of the result list). Click Modify and uncheck locations you don’t want to be indexed. Choosing Advanced lets you decide which file types should and shouldn’t be indexed.
If you want to leave search indexing on but find that it occasionally slows you down, you can stop its process when you need extra speed. Right-click on This Computer on the desktop, choose Manage. Then double-click Services and Applications, then Services.
Find Windows Search, and double-click on that. From this Properties dialog, you can choose a Startup type of Manual or Disabled to have the process silent by default. The Automatic (Delayed Start) startup type according to Microsoft help, “is preferred over the Automatic startup type because it helps reduce the effect on the system’s overall boot performance.” That may be turned on by default.
A final option is to go to the right-hand panel, click More options, and then Stop. You can also simply hit the stop button above the center section. Don’t forget to turn it back on at some point if you want to be able to search your system.
Turn Off Tips and Notifications
It may seem odd for a tip article to tell you to turn off Windows 10’s Tips feature, but it can reduce processing that Windows needs to do to display relevant tips for your system. The same can be said for Notifications. If Windows doesn’t need to generate a notification, your computing will go faster. I have over 40 apps that are capable of sending notifications. If you have a lot of these, too, go through the list and you’re bound to find sources from which you have no need to be notified. The distraction savings alone can speed up your PC use, if only in terms of your perception of computing speed.