How to Speed Up Windows 11: Proven Steps for a Faster PC

Learning how to speed up Windows 11 is one of the most searched computing topics because PC slowdowns affect nearly every user at some point — a machine that once felt snappy gradually becomes sluggish as startup programs accumulate, storage fills up, visual effects consume resources, and background processes multiply. The good news is that many of the most effective ways to speed up Windows 11 require no additional software and no hardware investment — they are built-in Windows settings and maintenance steps that most users have never touched. This guide covers how to speed up Windows 11 systematically, starting with the fastest and most impactful changes, working through software optimisation, and finishing with the hardware upgrades that produce the most dramatic improvement when software changes are not enough. You’ll find the complete rundown in our Complete Guide to Windows Software.

Before working through the steps below, establish a baseline so you can measure improvement. Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc), click the Performance tab, and note the CPU, memory, and disk usage at idle. A system that shows consistently high disk usage (90–100%) at idle without any obvious reason is almost always the source of Windows 11 slowness — and the steps below address the most common causes of this specific symptom.

How to Speed Up Windows 11: Startup Programs

The single most impactful step in how to speed up Windows 11 for most users is reducing the number of programmes that launch automatically when Windows starts. Every application that starts with Windows adds to boot time and consumes memory and CPU before you have opened a single application yourself. Here is how to manage startup programmes:

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager
2. Click the Startup apps tab (Windows 11) or the Startup tab (Windows 10)
3. Review the list. The Startup impact column shows High, Medium, or Low — focus on High impact items first
4. Right-click any programme you do not need immediately on startup and select Disable
5. Good candidates to disable: cloud storage clients (Dropbox, OneDrive — they will still work, they just start when you first open them), communication apps (Slack, Teams, Discord — open them when needed), software update tools, and manufacturer bloatware
6. Do not disable: antivirus software, audio drivers, or anything labelled as a Windows system component

After disabling startup programmes, restart Windows and measure boot time. For most users with cluttered startup lists, this one step is the most noticeable way to speed up Windows 11 during the startup phase — a machine that took 90 seconds to reach a usable desktop may now be ready in 20–30 seconds.

How to Speed Up Windows 11: Visual Effects and Animations

Windows 11’s visual effects — transparency effects, window animations, shadow effects, and smooth scrolling — consume GPU and CPU resources continuously. On high-end hardware, this overhead is imperceptible. On older PCs, integrated graphics laptops, and machines with under 8 GB RAM, disabling these effects produces a noticeable speed-up. Here is how to adjust visual effects to speed up Windows 11:

1. Press Windows + R, type sysdm.cpl and press Enter
2. Click the Advanced tab, then click Settings under Performance
3. Select Adjust for best performance to disable all visual effects at once — the most dramatic change
4. Alternatively, select Custom and uncheck specific items while keeping those you prefer
5. The effects that consume the most resources: Animate windows when minimising and maximising, Animations in the taskbar, Fade or slide menus into view, and Use transparency effects (also disableable in Settings → Personalisation → Colours → Transparency effects)

Quick tip: If you do not want to completely remove all visual effects to speed up Windows 11 but want the most performance per visual change, start by disabling Transparency effects (Settings → Personalisation → Colours) — this reduces GPU memory usage noticeably on integrated graphics systems without dramatically changing the interface appearance.

How to Speed Up Windows 11: Power Plan Settings

Windows 11 defaults to a Balanced power plan that reduces CPU clock speed when demand is low to save energy. On desktop PCs and laptops that are usually plugged in, the High performance power plan allows the CPU to run at full speed consistently — often the simplest way to speed up Windows 11 for applications that are CPU-bound. To change the power plan:

1. Press Windows + R, type powercfg.cpl and press Enter
2. Select High performance from the existing plans, or click Show additional plans to reveal it if hidden
3. On Windows 11 specifically, search for Power mode in Settings → System → Power, and set it to Best performance

For laptops, use High performance only when plugged in — it will significantly reduce battery life when unplugged. For desktops where power consumption is not a concern, High performance or the newer Windows 11 Ultimate Performance plan (available in Settings after enabling it via PowerShell) is one of the most effective ways to speed up Windows 11 for processing-intensive tasks without any hardware change.

How to Speed Up Windows 11: Storage and Temp File Cleanup

A drive that is more than 85–90% full slows Windows 11 significantly — the operating system needs free space for virtual memory, temporary files, and the system processes that run continuously. If the Windows drive (usually C:) is nearly full, freeing space is one of the most impactful ways to speed up Windows 11. Steps to reclaim space:

• Run Disk Cleanup: Search for Disk Cleanup in the Start menu, run it for the C: drive, click Clean up system files for additional options, and check Windows Update Cleanup, Previous Windows installation(s), and Temporary files
• Enable Storage Sense: Settings → System → Storage → Storage Sense — automatically deletes temporary files and empties the Recycle Bin on a schedule
• Identify large files: Use a disk space analyser to find what is consuming the most space. Our guide on the best disk space analyzer for Windows covers the free tools that visualise storage consumption and surface unexpectedly large files and folders
• Move large files: Photos, videos, and archives that do not need local access can be moved to external storage or cloud storage to free system drive space

How to Speed Up Windows 11: RAM and Background Processes

Insufficient RAM is one of the most common causes of persistent Windows 11 slowness — when the system runs out of physical memory, Windows uses a portion of the hard drive as virtual memory (the page file), which is dramatically slower. Open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and check Memory usage on the Performance tab. If memory consistently shows 80–90% usage at idle, either reducing background processes or adding more RAM is necessary to speed up Windows 11 meaningfully.

To reduce background memory consumption without hardware:

1. In Task Manager, click the Processes tab and sort by Memory. Identify applications consuming large amounts of RAM that you are not actively using
2. Close browser tabs — each Chrome or Edge tab consumes 50–150 MB of RAM; twenty open tabs can consume 2–3 GB
3. Disable Search indexing if you rarely use Windows Search: Services (search for it in Start) → Windows Search → double-click → Startup type: Disabled (this will prevent Search from returning results but removes constant background disk and CPU use)
4. Check for memory leaks in long-running applications by comparing RAM usage after a fresh restart versus after several hours of use

How to Speed Up Windows 11: Hardware Upgrades

When software optimisation reaches its limits, two hardware upgrades produce the most dramatic performance improvements to speed up Windows 11:

1. Upgrade to an SSD — If Windows 11 is running on a traditional spinning hard drive (HDD), replacing it with an SSD is the single biggest performance upgrade possible. Boot time drops from minutes to seconds, application launch time reduces dramatically, and the 90–100% disk usage problem disappears entirely. NVMe SSDs (for M.2 slots) are faster than SATA SSDs, but both are exponentially faster than any HDD. This is non-negotiable for anyone trying to speed up Windows 11 on a machine that still uses a mechanical drive.

2. Add or upgrade RAM — For systems with 4 GB or 8 GB RAM running Windows 11, upgrading to 16 GB provides the headroom for multiple applications and browser sessions without triggering virtual memory usage. 16 GB is the practical target for comfortable Windows 11 multitasking in 2026. Check your motherboard’s maximum supported RAM and available slots before purchasing.

After implementing any combination of these steps to speed up Windows 11, return to Task Manager and compare CPU, memory, and disk usage against your baseline. The performance tab shows a 60-second history graph — a healthy Windows 11 system at idle should show CPU under 10%, memory under 60%, and disk under 20%. If any metric remains persistently high after following these steps, our guide on the best PC optimization software covers the diagnostic and cleaning tools that address more specific causes of Windows 11 slowness. The Microsoft Support website has additional official guidance on Windows 11 performance troubleshooting for edge cases not covered in this guide. Our guide on How to Make Windows 11 Look Better covers an adjacent issue.