Your computer may appear to be running smoothly, but what's going on
“behind the scenes”? Just as you should regularly check your car's oil, water and tire pressure, it's worth using the tools built into Windows to monitor and optimize your computer's performance.
These tools are scattered throughout the operating system, but a new free program called Wintoys makes them easier to find through a well-organized interface that explains everything clearly.
Download it from the Microsoft Store at https://bit.ly/3LvqGq2. Start by clicking on the Health tab. Some of the features here, like allowing your PC to start up faster, can be turned on or off, but others have additional settings that you can access by clicking the cursors or drop-down menus.
To optimize startup speed, enable 'Fast Startup' and 'Hibernation'. The 20% setting refers to the amount of memory reserved for a quick access copy of your system that your PC can use to boot.
This is the minimum required for a quick boot and we recommend leaving it as is, but increasing it to 40% would also make waking from hibernation faster. Wintoys makes hidden or unknown features easier to find.
If you regularly suffer from unexplained crashes, like the blue screen of death, for example, you may not know which tools to use to solve the problem – unless you have Wintoys. Expand the 'Repair' section and check the boxes next to one (or more) of the available options.
DISM checks whether the files that Windows uses to repair a corrupted system are valid. SFC repairs any problems with system files, and CHKDSK moves data from corrupt hard drive sectors to safe areas.
Once you have made your selections, click 'Scan'. Click on 'View logs'
to see the results of your scan. If these indicate that repairs are necessary, close the box, click the 'x' at the end of the status line and then click the 'Repair' button that appears.
Please note that although you can run a CHKDSK scan on the C: drive while Windows is running, you cannot use the
repair anoint – you risk moving data that Windows depends on. If you choose this option, the repair will be carried out on the next reboot.
The longer you use your PC, the more disorganized it becomes. Windows can do the cleaning in the background, but you may have more success if you manually run a series of Cleanup tasks. This section offers tools to remove all items from the taskbar, delete all junk files, remove automatically pinned folders from File Explorer Quick Access, clear Microsoft cache
Store, clear DNS cache.
