How to boost Windows 8 operation

Go to know Windows 8'due south built-in tools for troubleshooting and speeding up your PC

At that place'due south an unassailable rule of computing: No thing how fast your computer is, and no matter how well it runs, yous desire information technology to run amend.

If you lot're looking to improve Windows viii, help is on the way. I've rounded upward my favorite tips for doing organisation analysis, troubleshooting and fixing any problems you discover, and in full general speeding things up. No extra software is required; everything you lot need is built right into Windows viii.

If you've been around the Windows cake a few times, y'all probably recall having to manually crank through an array of performance-oriented tasks: mucking around with folio files, editing the Registry or using 3rd-party tools such as deejay cleaners. But over the years Windows has gotten much improve at automating many of those tasks. In Windows eight, generally the best style to improve functioning and know what's going on in your system is to use Windows' congenital-in tools, including the Resources Monitor, the Job Manager and the Reliability Monitor.

For some reason, however, several of the almost useful administrative tools are hidden past default, so the beginning thing to exercise is unhide them: Press the Windows key + I to open the Settings amuse, click the word Tiles, and and so change the "Prove authoritative tools" slider to Yes.

With these hidden gems revealed, we can become started.

For more useful tips, see x Windows eight tips, tricks and hacks. If you demand help getting upwardly to speed with Windows 8, see Windows 8 cheat sail.

Troubleshoot lethargy with the Resource Monitor

A little-known tool called the Resources Monitor does a very good chore of tracking downwardly functioning problems and fixing them. Although it's non new -- it's been included in Windows since Vista -- it'south still a great way to observe out well-nigh the resources your system uses and to see what applications and services are making the most use of your system. Based on that, you can decide which apps and services to shut downwardly and which to keep running.

To run information technology, type resmon at the Start screen and and so click the resmon.exe icon that appears on the left side of the screen under Apps.

Notation: If you're using a company-owned PC and don't have Administrator privileges, y'all may not exist able to run the Resources Monitor. Just never fearfulness: You can still use the Task Manager and about other tools covered in this story to troubleshoot operation bug.

If you are able to go into the Resource Monitor, start on the Overview tab. It offers a snapshot of your organization's resource usage, including CPU utilise, disk use, network utilize and retentiveness use.

Windows 8 Resource Monitor
The Resource Monitor can help track down causes of sluggish performance.

The screen is divided into two. On the left-hand side you'll run into every procedure running on your system, past resource category (CPU, Deejay, Network, and Memory), along with details about the usage of each procedure. (A process is whatever program that runs in Windows, from a tiny background task to a complex application such equally a Web browser.)

On the right-mitt side you'll see moving graphs of their cumulative employ over fourth dimension. You can see at a glance whether your CPU, disk, network or memory use is maxing out. If any are, you know you've got a problem, and you know the general category of trouble.

For more details about whatever of those categories, click the appropriate tab across the peak of the Resource Monitor. Each tab shows you what applications or services are making use of that detail resource, forth with other useful information. For example, the CPU tab shows all the apps and services using the CPU, with a running average of CPU use for each app and service. Those that use the CPU the nigh are listed at the top; those that use information technology the least are listed at the bottom.

The brandish in each tab varies according to what's most useful. For example, the Memory tab shows, in addition to what programs and services are using memory, how much memory is currently used, cached, reserved for hardware and so on.

Once you lot've zeroed in on the trouble, you can do something about it. If you lot've got apps and services overtaxing your CPU, for instance, yous tin can close any of them by right-clicking it and selecting Terminate Procedure from the drop-down carte du jour. You might besides consider looking for alternatives to those apps and services, and and so using Resource Monitor after on to come across whether those alternatives have lower resource usage.

Annotation that most of the information that the Resource Monitor displays is also shown in the Task Manager, another built-in functioning tool we'll embrace afterwards in this article. Redone for Windows 8, the Job Manager has a more comprehensive set of tools and information than the Resources Monitor. That said, the Resource Monitor is still a useful tool for troubleshooting performance problems considering information technology offers a quick at-a-glance look at your organisation, with in-depth data on each of its tabs.

Track stability and troubleshoot crashes with the Reliability Monitor

Another useful Windows tool is the Reliability Monitor, start introduced in Windows Vista. It offers a historical view of overall arrangement stability and fifty-fifty includes detailed information nigh system crashes. Armed with this information, you can pinpoint the sources of problems and have steps to eliminate them.

To launch the Reliability Monitor, blazon reliability at the Outset screen, click Settings, and click the "View reliability history" icon that appears on the left under Settings. The blue line running across the graph shows your system's stability over fourth dimension. Information technology'southward based on a number that Windows calculates to guess your organization'south overall reliability. The maximum is 10 and the minimum is 1.

Every time in that location'south a system failure, awarding failure or similar event, the alphabetize drops, sometimes sharply -- particularly if there's been more than 1 failure in a 24-hour interval. Each twenty-four hours your system doesn't have a failure, the alphabetize rises a little chip.

On days at that place are failures, you'll see red icons, divided into rows by blazon of failure -- application, Windows or miscellaneous (hardware, drivers, etc.). The chart also has icons for warnings most unsuccessful updates and for information nigh successful updates and installations.

Windows 8 Reliability Monitor
Windows eight'south Reliability Monitor gives you insight into system and awarding crashes, update info and more.

Select any day with a failure or other result, and at the lesser of the screen you'll encounter details about those events, divided into categories. Pay attention to the details of each crash and failure. Look for patterns, such equally if the same application ofttimes crashes. If so, uninstall it, or await for an update that fixes the problem.

Finally, down at the very bottom of the screen click "View all problem reports." Rather than seeing a nautical chart over fourth dimension, y'all'll instead come across a listing of all of your problems, including summaries. Information technology lets you ringlet through your problems more quickly than in the normal view, because they're in a long, vertical listing.

Generate a detailed Functioning Monitor report

Windows 8 includes a Performance Monitor tool that shows an immense amount of detail about a organisation's hardware and software. Unfortunately, its chief interface is almost incommunicable to decipher. There is, yet, i way to get some very useful data out of the Performance Monitor -- tell it to generate a detailed report for you that pinpoints system issues and suggests fixes.

Yous don't create the written report direct from the Performance Monitor. Instead, from the Outset screen blazon perfmon /report and click the "perfmn /written report" icon that appears on the left. (Note that you might need Administrator rights to your PC to run the report.) A screen appears telling yous that a report is generated, and after a infinitesimal or two, an interactive report appears onscreen.

Windows 8 Performance Monitor report
A Performance Monitor report: This PC'south got troubles.

The report can exist lengthy, and goes into listen-numbing detail about your system. (If you want to know about things such every bit your system's video classes and UDP data it's the identify to go.) Almost useful are reports of errors or problems. If it finds any, those will exist at the very beginning of the report. For each fault or trouble, it describes the symptom and the cause, suggests how to fix information technology, and provides a link to other useful data.

Streamline startup

A common cause of system slowdowns is programs that load unnecessarily at startup and bog downward your system. At that place are several means to speed upward startup.

A good identify to outset is the Task Director. You've got several dissimilar ways to launch the Job Director -- take your choice:

  • Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc.
  • Correct-click the taskbar on the Desktop and cull Task Manager.
  • Type chore managing director on the Commencement screen, and click the Job Manager icon that appears on the left under Apps.
  • Press Ctrl-Alt-Del, then cull Task Managing director from the screen that appears.
  • Right-click the lower-left corner of your screen and select Job Manager.

If you encounter the phrase "More details" at the bottom of the Task Manager screen, click information technology. If you run across the phrase "Fewer details" at the bottom of the screen, you're already in the correct place.

Now click the Startup tab. You'll see a list of programs and services that launch when y'all get-go Windows. For each i, you lot'll see its proper name, its publisher, whether it'south enabled and the "startup affect" -- how much startup is slowed down past launching it. According to Microsoft'south developer site, apps labeled every bit having high startup touch on use more than one second of CPU time or more than 3MB of disk I/O at startup, medium-impact apps use 300 to thousand milliseconds of CPU fourth dimension or 300KB to 3MB of disk I/O, and low-impact apps use less than 300ms of CPU time and less than 300 KB of disk I/O.

Windows 8 Task Manager - Startup tab
Using the Task Manager'south Startup tab, you can forestall programs from launching when Windows starts up.

If yous'd similar to stop any of the programs or services from launching at startup, right-click it and select Disable. This doesn't disable the program entirely; it simply prevents information technology from launching at startup. If you later make up one's mind you want it to launch at startup, get back here, right-click it and select Enable.

Some programs might have a small triangle next to them, indicating that they have multiple processes that run on startup. Click the triangle to run across all the processes. It'southward not a proficient idea to disable some but not others, because that could cause instability in the program. And then either disable all the processes or none.

Yous'll likely recognize some of the programs and services that run at startup, such as SkyDrive. Only you'll also probably come across many that aren't familiar to you and whose purpose is almost impossible to discern. What to exercise nearly something called "persistence Module" or "hkcmd Module?" Should you turn them off or leave them on?

The Task Manager offers some solid aid. Correct-click an item and select Properties, and you lot'll see more detail about it, including its location, whether it has a digital signature from a visitor you know and other information such equally the version number, its size and the final time it was modified.

Alternatively, when yous right-click y'all tin select "Open file location" and you'll open File Explorer to the folder where the file is located. That may give you lot a inkling about the program'due south purpose.

Best of all, though, is to select "Search online" later on you correct-click. Bing launches and provides links to sites with data about the program or service. You'll usually very quickly find out information about the particular, including its purpose and advice on whether information technology's safe.

For more than means to use the Task Manager to speed up your system, see "Track and fine-tune performance with the Task Manager" afterwards in this commodity.

Clean out the Startup folder

At that place's another place to go if you lot desire to terminate programs from launching when you start your organization -- the Startup folder. You can run File Explorer in one of these ways:

  • Press the Windows central + E.
  • Click the File Explorer icon on the Desktop's taskbar.
  • Type file explorer on the Offset screen and click the File Explorer icon that appears on the left.

Make sure you tin can view subconscious files in File Explorer: Click the View tab and cheque the boxes next to "Hidden items" and "File proper noun extensions" in the Ribbon at the top.

Next, click the Estimator icon in the left pane and navigate to:

C:\Users\<em>username</em>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows<br>\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

where username is your Windows logon. Delete the shortcuts of any programs you don't desire to run at startup. Don't worry; you lot won't delete the programs themselves, but their shortcuts.

Use Fast Startup

There's one last startup particular to check: Make sure that Windows 8 uses a new mode called Fast Startup, a hybrid of a traditional shutdown/kicking operation and hibernation. When you lot shut down your PC, all user sessions are closed but the Windows kernel session is saved to disk, or hibernated. Then when you first Windows again, it loads the hibernated system session from deejay, cutting startup time.

Past default, Fast Startup should be enabled on your system. But information technology's a good idea to make sure it's turned on, just in case your organisation wasn't set upward correctly or Fast Startup was accidentally turned off.

On the Beginning screen, type power, click Settings and click the Power Options icon that appears on the left side of the screen under Settings. Click "Choose what the ability buttons do" in the left pane, and under "Shutdown settings" at the bottom of the screen that appears, make sure that the box next to "Turn on fast startup" is checked.