Welcome back to the fold, my friend. While it’s been far too long, I’m hopeful that our delayed separation gave you some time to do the Spring Cleaning we spoke of last time. A great man once mused “a clean desktop reflects a clean mind,” and that adage continues to hold true 10 minutes after it was formed. But what’s that? Your computer continues to run like a brontosaurus through a tar pit? Well then gather around the hearth, because there’s wisdom to be had.
Computer slowness can be a transient beast, an immaterial being that will strike on a whim from the shadows. Often it’s possible to hide from it until it passes, but I say this is folly. We have the tools to lay the beast low and using them is not only a right, but also a duty as a member of the human race. So without further delay, let’s introduce the Caladbolg of your arsenal, the Task Manager. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc on your keyboard to unsheathe the legend and prepare for war. And fret not, youngling, for this tired analogy is finished.
The Task Manager is the simplest tool for diagnosing slowness and has been made considerably easier in the post-Windows 7 world. In the name of keeping things (relatively) succinct, I’ll focus on the basics. The Processes tab gives an overview of how many resources items on your machine are consuming. While it might look daunting, the color-coding makes spotting problem children considerably easier (darker orange = more resources consumed). Keep in mind that ending processes can cause detrimental behavior if you don’t know what it’s doing, so avoid ending that System and Compressed Memory process just because it’s in the orange and ask yourself “have I rebooted lately?”
The Startup tab is the second important one here. A large number of programs will set themselves to start immediately when you log into the computer, and can have a significant overall impact on system speed. Reviewing the list to disabe any high- or medium-impact startup programs (I’m looking at you, Spotify) can improve overall system performance a great deal. It also saves you from needing to review the processes list later.
The Services tab can be considered functionally-similar to the startup tab. Services in Windows run in the background on your computer and are interacted with the programs you use (Firefox, Microsoft Office, etc). This level of detachment and the large number of them can make the task of sorting through them a bit daunting, though. When searching for items to stop and disable, start with the ones that your machine obviously doesn’t need to keep running (1). Also keep in mind that important services are set to start automatically at start-up, so give the machine a reboot if disabling a service cleaves the world in two, a la Caladbolg. If you want to make sure a service doesn’t start again after a reboot, you’ll need to set it to disabled under Open Services (2).
For solidarity, I’ll also give a quick breakdown of the other tabs. The Performance tab shows resource usage over time using a line graph and lets you access the Resource Monitor. The App History tab provides light resource usage data for built-in Windows 10 apps and is therefore not useful for 99.99% of the population. The Details tab is a more in-depth, less user-friendly Processes tab that will look familiar to anyone who used the Task Manager before Windows 8. The Users tab can be useful for viewing open processes when multiple people are logged onto the same computer, but otherwise should be ignored.
And that’s about it! Keep in mind that with great power comes great responsibility©, so use a measured hand when disabling that startup process or service. Hopefully you’ve learned something today, because I know I sure have. Anyway, keep it real and hip out there (a shout-out for the youngsters). Part 3 of my long-standing column will cover something else that is most likely computer-related. Byyyyyyyeee!