Category: Windows

How to speed up Windows 10

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Since Windows 10 has been around for a while, you might notice that in few area it got slower with time if compared to Windows 8/8.1.
I’ve prepared a small list of hints of what to set/check to improve the performance, especially how to speed up Windows 10 boot time significantly.

  1. ReadyBoost

    If you have possibility to do so, try using a small pendrive, SD card or internal, small SSD disk to create cache drive for Windows to speed up loading things that you use frequentely.
    To use given device as ReadyBoost, just right click it, choose Properties->ReadyBoost->Use this device:

    Speed up Windows 10 with ReadyBoost

  2. Disable Background Intelligent Transfer Service in Services (in Control Panel)

    It’s Windows service responsible for using idle bandwidth for Windows Update and so on; it won’t interrupt Windows Update but will speed up things up a little.

  3. Disable services that you don’t recall in MSCONFIG

    Find Run in search, then inside it type msconfig and hit Enter. Then navigate to Services tab, mark checkbox with Hide all Microsoft services and then start disabling services you don’t recall installing or the one you know but don’t want to run in background:

    Speed up Windows 10 with Msconfig setup

  4. Disable applications running on Startup

    Just run Task Manager, navigate to Startup tab and disable applications you don’t want to start with Windows:

    Speed up Windows 10 with Task Manager Startup

  5. Disable Scheduled Optimization in Optimize Drives and run defrag yourself

    That’s pretty straightforward; it will disable automatic defragmentation of your disks and will leave it up to you to defrag them once in a while. Right click on any hard drive in My computer and choose Properties. Then navigate to Tools, choose Optimize and then disable Scheduled Optimization:

    Speed up Windows 10 with disabled Scheduled Optimization

  6. Disable Show me tips about Windows

    These might look harmful to users not familiar with Windows 10 but it really speeds up Windows 10 significantly; worth dumping it over and googling/binging for answers in Internet instead. Just type Show me tips about Windows in Search and then disable it:

    Speed up Windows 10 with disabled Show Me Tips

  7. Change display list of OS time to 1s

    Another thing that might get you frustrated is to wait for your OS to startup for several seconds; there is actually one option in Windows that additionally delays it. Find Run by Search once again and type in sysdm.cpl and hit Enter. Then, navigate to Advanced, choose Settings in Startup and Recovery section and then change Time to display list of operating systems to 1. Make sure not to change anything more up here:

    Speed up Windows 10 with decreased time to display OS

Result

In my particular case, I’ve managed to speed up Windows 10 significantly and minimize boot time from ~30s to ~11s.
OS responsiveness got better and disk usage got lowered after performed changes.
If you feel that you’re advanced user, you might want to also check if you have FastBoot enabled in BIOS to speed up your PC boot even more.

Installing Windows 10 on 16GB tablet

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Windows 10 is here and probably every Windows-oriented user would at least like to try it out on any desired machine that is ready for upgrade. While Microsoft offered a convenient way of doing so throuhg “Get Windows” application, it gets forever to get in the line for an update or it just breaks and you can’t automatically upgrade through Windows Upgrade because of “Something happened”. Probably the biggest technical challenge ist to upgrade from low-end, Windows 8.1 with Bing tablet. However, Microsoft gave as another way to do so and I’m gonna show you that installing Windows 10 on 16GB tablet is not that difficult to proceed.

Prerequisites

– Windows 8.1 with Bing tablet with 16GB of space (that is ~4GB for user) and OTG support
– Windows 7/8/8.1/10 device with at least 10GB of free disk space
– microSD card with at least 16GB of space (minimal space on card required: 10GB)
– USB flash drive with at least 3.3GB free space (4GB should be fine, I’ve used 8GB one)
– OTG adapter (microUSB – USB)

Before proceeding make sure through “Get Windows” near your system clock that your device meets Windows 10 requirements before proceeding!

Quick look on tablet setup

Installing Windows 10 on 16GB tablet

OTG support and OTG cable
We need it so that our tablet supports using external devices through its microUSB port. As it’s the only way to use external drive for Windows 10 media it’a must. Most of Win8 tablets, even the lower end support it so no worries.

MicroSD 16GB card
You’d thing that’s huge comparing to device itself that probably has like ~11-12GB of space with only 3-4GB for user use. That’s actually why we need so much space – installation requires around 9GB for decompressing installation files and preparing installation from Windows 10 media.

Windows 7/8/8.1/10 device
As 16GB tablet lacks space for installing windows 10 on it, we need another device to download and prepare Windows 10 media on.

Preparing Windows 10 media

Downloading Windows 10 image
If you haven’t installed Windows 10 yourselves anywhere, you might be not familiar with tool Microsoft provided called “Media Creation Tool”.
You can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/pl-pl/software-download/windows10
What’s different for installing windows 10 on 16GB tablet is that we will use second option called Create installation media for another PC.

Installing Windows 10 on 16GB tablet

Then, our preffered options should be:

English (United States), Windows 10 Home, 32-bit

Please note, that from Windows 8 you can download any language later on so don’t worry and choose US English as it lacks compatibility issues. If your device had other language as default, it would be on Windows 10 start anyway and US English will be the one to be additionally added once more.

Now, Media Creation Tool will guide you with the process.
As we’re lacking space on such low-end device, software will ask as for some other drive when it can store temp files and Windows Restore files. For that let’s choose our microSD card from dropdown list:

Installing Windows 10 on 16GB tablet

After doing so, Media Creation Tool will ask for drive to store Windows 10 media.

Installing Windows 10 on 16GB tablet

Let’s choose our USB drive connected to our PC. Then, we can start preparing the media drive. It will take some time to download and prepare media so take your time.

And finally: Installing Windows 10 on your 16GB tablet

When Windows 10 media is ready, browse to the USB flash drive on your tablet and run setup.exe.

Before installing charge your device to 100% and read every warning that installation process will notify on before proceeding!

You might also need to change your language setting if setup will tell you that “Something went wrong”.
You can do so by going to Control Panel -> Region -> Administrative -> Language for Non-Unicode Programs and choosing English(United States).
Using Copy Settings (the same tab as the previous option) for everyone else for the installation time.

Installing Windows 10 on 16GB tablet

After installation – Windows 10 experience

My first impressions on Windows 10 on 16GB tablet were both good and bad.
I already knew the OS and found the Tablet Mode a blessing. Multitasking is much easier and notification center is a lifesaver. However, Microsoft Edge seems to be unprepared for touch-only users as it lacks UI customization for tablets.
Also – after Windows 10 installation Menu Start animations were not smooth, thing were going slower than on Windows 8.1 with Bing and my screen backlight would refuse to completely turn off after clicking On/Off on the tablet (it would go black but would also keep backlight of the screen on). But – what put me in awe – after installing all of the modules and updates (what OS have done for me in 10 minutes after first launch) it all went back to being smooth as before and all of the other issues disappeared.

Hint!

You might also think of cleaning up C:\$Windows.~BT folder as it won’t be useful for you anymore but still takes a lot of space on tablet, depending how much OS managed to download Win10 media on its own before you manually upgraded.

Can’t upgrade to Windows 10?

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If you’re one of thousands like me that can’t even get Windows Update to pop out upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1 (I failed to do so from tablet, ultrabook and desktop), you can try a two workarounds:

First one if you can’t upgrade to Windows 10:

  • Delete everything in %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download
  • Search in start for cmd, right click and Run as administrator, then type in uauclt.exe /updatenow and hit enter

Second one if you still can’t upgrade to Windows 10 (that one was the only one working for me):

And… that’s it. Installation after few more downloads, check ins etc. should proceed with Windows 10 upgrade.