How to make windows shut down faster
By Daniel Kim
Windows PCs should shut down fairly quickly—unless there’s a problem causing a shutdown delay. Here’s how to make your computer shut down faster.
Ensure Windows Isn’t Clearing Your Page File at Shutdown
Windows uses a paging file, also known as a page file, as additional virtual memory. Windows has a hidden option—disabled by default—to clear the paging file at shutdown. This erases everything in the page file, ensuring no sensitive data is stored where someone could access it by removing the computer’s hard drive and examining the paging file.
Your computer may take several minutes to shut down while Windows erases the page file, if this option is enabled. How long it takes depends how large the page file is and how fast your hard drive is. However, you don’t need this option if your hard drive is encrypted (which you should do if you haven’t already). The encryption will prevent an attacker from examining your page file while the computer is shut down.
If your computer is managed by an IT department, they may have enabled this option for a reason. In that case, there’s not much you can do besides shrinking the size of the page file.
Standard warning: Registry Editor is a powerful tool and misusing it can render your system unstable or even inoperable. This is a pretty simple hack and as long as you stick to the instructions, you shouldn’t have any problems. That said, if you’ve never worked with it before, consider reading about how to use the Registry Editor before you get started. And definitely back up the Registry (and your computer!) before making changes.
You can check if your computer is clearing its page file at shut down by examining the Windows registry. Press Windows+R, type “regedit” into the Run dialog, and press Enter to open it.
Navigate to the following key in the Registry Editor window:
Look in the right pane for the “ClearPageFileAtShutdown” setting. If the data is set to “0x00000000 (0)”, Windows is not clearing the page file at shut down. If it’s set to “0x00000001 (1)”, Windows is clearing the page file at shutdown.
If you don’t see any “ClearPageFileAtShutdown” setting here, that’s fine—Windows isn’t clearing the page file at shutdown.
If it’s set to “1”, you can prevent Windows from clearing the page file at shutdown by double-clicking the “ClearPageFileAtShudown” setting and setting it to “0”. Your shutdown process should become much faster.
Locate Services Causing Shutdown Delays
Rather than guess if a service running in the background on your computer is slowing your shutdown process, you can actually check which ones are guilty.
To do this, you’ll need to use the Event Viewer. Either right-click the Start button on Windows 10 or 8 and select “Event Viewer” or press Windows+R, type “eventvwr” into the Run dialog, and press Enter.
Navigate to the following section in the Event Viewer:
Right-click the “Operational” log and select “Filter Current Log”.
Type “203” into the “Event IDs” field and click “OK”. This will filter the log to show only shutdown events.
Look through the list, which will now only show events that read “This service caused a delay in the system shutdown process”. You’ll see the name of the service slowing things down in the General box. Look next to “File Name” and “Friendly Name”.
The information you see here will point you at any services taking a long time to shut down. For example, VPN software might take a long time to shut down and may be causing a long delay. If you have the software installed but don’t actively use it, you can uninstall it. Search the web for the name of any software you see here to see what it is and whether you can uninstall it. Some services here are system software you can’t do anything about, however.
Check Your WaitToKillServiceTimeout Value
Windows doesn’t shut down immediately when you click “Shut Down”. Instead, it sends a “the system is shutting down” signal to any open applications and background services. Windows waits for a period of time to allow these services to finish up and save their data before it closes them and shuts down the computer.
By default, Windows waits five seconds after you click “Shut Down” before it closes any background services and shuts down the computer. However, if all background services shut down successfully before the five second timer expires, the computer will shut down immediately.
There are a few different values that manage how long your computer waits, and we discussed them in this guide. But there’s one in particular you may want to check if your computer is taking a while to shut down: the “WaitToKillServiceTimeout” value. Some applications increase the value to more than 5 seconds when you install them, as they might want extra time to clean things up at shut down. If this value has been changed, your computer will take longer to shut down than normal.
Open a registry editor window by pressing Windows+R, typing “regedit”, and pressing Enter. Navigate to the following key:
Look in the right pane for the “WaitToKillServiceTimeout” and read the value in the Data column. The value is displayed in milliseconds. For example, if WaitToKillServiceTimeout is set to 5000, Windows will wait 5 seconds. If the value is set to 20000, Windows will wait 20 seconds.
We don’t recommend setting this value to less than 5000. Some services may not be able to shut down properly if you don’t give them enough time.
However, if an application has increased the value to a larger number, you might want to set it back to “5000”. Just double-click “WaitToKillServiceTimeout” and enter a value of “5000”.
There isn’t a ton you can do to make your computer shut down faster, but hopefully with these tricks in hand, you can ensure it’s shutting down as fast as possible.
By Vera | Follow | Last Updated January 16, 2020
Summary :
Do you find your PC shut down very slowly, making you very annoyed? Then you may want to make shutdown faster. Is there any way to increase shutdown speed in Windows 10? Take it easy, and here we will walk you through four common methods to speed up shutdown time.
Windows Slow Shutdown
Speed is the most important factor to measure computer performance for some Windows 10 users. Basically, Windows 10 can power off at a reasonable speed, which can save your some valuable time.
However, for some reasons, for example, the Windows operating system takes some time to close programs or stop running processes, some services delay the shutdown, Windows clears page files during the shutdown process, etc., then the computer will take longer to shut down than it usually takes.
If you are used to leaving only when the computer is turned off, this can really challenge your patience, letting you fairly upset. How to increase shutdown speed? We will list four common methods for you in the following part.
4 Ways to Speed up Shutdown Time in Windows 10
Way 1: Create a Shutdown Shortcut
To speed up shutdown time in Windows 10, you can also create a shutdown shortcut to immediately power off the operating system.
Step 1: Right-click on the blank area in the Windows Desktop, choose New > Shortcut.
Step 2: Type Shutdown.exe -s -t 00 in the text box, type Next and Finish. If you want to shut down the PC, click this shortcut.
Way 2: Change Your WaitToKillServiceTimeout Value
Windows itself tries to properly close all open applications and background services before shutdown and Windows will wait for a few seconds to finish closing the running processes. Usually, Windows waits for five seconds.
But when you install some applications, the time is changed to more than 5 seconds so that apps can have extra time to clean things up at shutdown. To speed up shutdown time, you can choose to edit the Windows Registry key.
Step 1: Hold on Windows and R keys at the same time to launch the Run window.
Step 2: Type regedit and hit Enter to open Registry Editor.
Step 3: Go to this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control.
Step 4: Double-click on the WaitToKillServiceTimeout key and set its value data from 5000 to 2000 (means 2 seconds).
Step 5: Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.
Step 6: Choose New > String Value to create created 2 “REG_SZ” values.
Step 7: Name one as HungAppTimeout and give it a value of 2000. Then, name another key as WaitToKillAppTimeOut and set its value data to 2000.
Step 8: Exit Windows Registry Editor and restart your computer.
All these operations can decrease the time that Windows will wait for applications and services.
Way 3: Turn off Page File at Shutdown
To keep PC secure, you can choose to clear page file every time you power off your PC, but this may take some time to perform a shutdown. To increase shutdown speed, disable page file by following the guide:
Step 1: Run Windows Registry Editor (as mentioned above).
Step 2: Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management.
Step 3: Double-click on ClearPageFileAtShutdown and set the value data to 0.
Way 4: Disable Clear Virtual Memory Page File at Shutdown
If Windows clear virtual memory page file at shutdown, Windows slow shutdown will occur. So, turn this setting off.
Step 1: Type secpol.msc in the Run box and click OK.
Step 2: Go to Local Policies > Security Options > Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile and disable it.
Now, four methods to speed up shutdown time are introduced to you. Please try them to increase shutdown speed if Windows takes much time to turn off.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Position: Columnist
Vera is an editor of the MiniTool Team since 2016 who has more than 5 years’ writing experiences in the field of technical articles. Her articles mainly focus on disk & partition management, PC data recovery, video conversion, as well as PC backup & restore, helping users to solve some errors and issues when using their computers. In her spare times, she likes shopping, playing games and reading some articles.
Published on January 19, 2016 By Amit Kumar
Do you want to know – how to speed up Windows 10 shutdown process? Or, what’s the easiest way to speed up slow shutdown in Windows 10?
If yes, you are at quite appropriate place. Because after installing Windows 10 on my computer, i noticed that windows 10 takes a long time to shut down. But thankfully, Windows 10 operating system comes with a built-in ability to speed up shutdown process (reduce shutdown time).
Basically, when you shutdown your Windows 10 computer then the OS waits for a response from all running applications and services on the PC. This is the main reason of slow shutdown in Windows 10. As soon as the service or app will finish its job and exit quickly, the Computer will shutdown faster.
In this Windows help guide, i will explain you how you can easily speed up shutdown in Windows 10 computers without using any software.
How to Speed Up Windows 10 Slow Shutdown
In the Windows Registry, you have to enter the desired time value in seconds which will force to kill the running applications to proceed with the fast shutdown. It’s upto you, how much timeout value do you fix to speed up Windows 10 shutdown. Here’s how:
Step (1): First of all, open Registry Editor. To do this, press Win + R keys together and type regedit in Run dialog box then press Enter.
Step (2): On Registry Editor, navigate to the following path:
Step (3): In the right pane of registry editor, double click on the WaitToKillServiceTimeout REG_SZ value and modify its Value data according to your wish and then click on OK.
The number entered in Value data is in milliseconds and according to the OS requirement, it must be between 1000 and 20000 (1 and 20 seconds respectively). You should enter the lower value to make Windows 10 shutdown faster.
Step (4): Next, navigate to the following Registry key:
This registry key is to fix the timeout of interactive applications such as Notepad, or Microsoft Word etc. Since, these applications run in the active user session so you need to apply another tweak.
Step (5): From the right pane of registry editor, create two REG_SZ values – HungAppTimeout and WaitToKillAppTimeout. Also, set its Value data according to your wish and then click on OK.
HungAppTimeout setup will instantly considered the running apps as unresponsive when you will restart or shutdown Windows 10 PC and then Windows will ask you to terminate it.
WaitToKillAppTimeout setup will kill all the running apps instantly when you will restart or shutdown your Windows 10 computer.
Step (6): Once settings is done, close the Windows registry and Restart Windows 10 computer. that’s it!
Now from next time, you will see the effect of Windows 10 shutting down quickly.
Important note: It would be better if you don’t apply the tweak HungAppTimeout and WaitToKillAppTimeout parameters to speed up Windows 10 slow shutdown. Because if you enter their timeout value very low, either the running apps will be unable to save their data properly or the Windows will kill them before they can save their data.
I hope you got an appropriate guide about speeding up Windows 10 slow shutdown. Feel free to share your view with through comments. Do you know any other ways to speed up Windows 10 shutdown? If yes, please share with us.
Published on January 19, 2016 By Amit Kumar
Do you want to know – how to speed up Windows 10 shutdown process? Or, what’s the easiest way to speed up slow shutdown in Windows 10?
If yes, you are at quite appropriate place. Because after installing Windows 10 on my computer, i noticed that windows 10 takes a long time to shut down. But thankfully, Windows 10 operating system comes with a built-in ability to speed up shutdown process (reduce shutdown time).
Basically, when you shutdown your Windows 10 computer then the OS waits for a response from all running applications and services on the PC. This is the main reason of slow shutdown in Windows 10. As soon as the service or app will finish its job and exit quickly, the Computer will shutdown faster.
In this Windows help guide, i will explain you how you can easily speed up shutdown in Windows 10 computers without using any software.
How to Speed Up Windows 10 Slow Shutdown
In the Windows Registry, you have to enter the desired time value in seconds which will force to kill the running applications to proceed with the fast shutdown. It’s upto you, how much timeout value do you fix to speed up Windows 10 shutdown. Here’s how:
Step (1): First of all, open Registry Editor. To do this, press Win + R keys together and type regedit in Run dialog box then press Enter.
Step (2): On Registry Editor, navigate to the following path:
Step (3): In the right pane of registry editor, double click on the WaitToKillServiceTimeout REG_SZ value and modify its Value data according to your wish and then click on OK.
The number entered in Value data is in milliseconds and according to the OS requirement, it must be between 1000 and 20000 (1 and 20 seconds respectively). You should enter the lower value to make Windows 10 shutdown faster.
Step (4): Next, navigate to the following Registry key:
This registry key is to fix the timeout of interactive applications such as Notepad, or Microsoft Word etc. Since, these applications run in the active user session so you need to apply another tweak.
Step (5): From the right pane of registry editor, create two REG_SZ values – HungAppTimeout and WaitToKillAppTimeout. Also, set its Value data according to your wish and then click on OK.
HungAppTimeout setup will instantly considered the running apps as unresponsive when you will restart or shutdown Windows 10 PC and then Windows will ask you to terminate it.
WaitToKillAppTimeout setup will kill all the running apps instantly when you will restart or shutdown your Windows 10 computer.
Step (6): Once settings is done, close the Windows registry and Restart Windows 10 computer. that’s it!
Now from next time, you will see the effect of Windows 10 shutting down quickly.
Important note: It would be better if you don’t apply the tweak HungAppTimeout and WaitToKillAppTimeout parameters to speed up Windows 10 slow shutdown. Because if you enter their timeout value very low, either the running apps will be unable to save their data properly or the Windows will kill them before they can save their data.
I hope you got an appropriate guide about speeding up Windows 10 slow shutdown. Feel free to share your view with through comments. Do you know any other ways to speed up Windows 10 shutdown? If yes, please share with us.
Another version of Windows, another silly three-click process just to shut down your PC. Here are some faster alternatives.
It must be a point of pride in Redmond that even after all these years, you still have to click “Start” to shut down your computer.
Granted, the Start button is no longer labeled that way, having evolved into a Windows-logo button back in Vista. But that’s still what it’s called, and still how Microsoft refers to it. So even in Windows 10, you have to click “Start” to shut down your PC. Then you click Power, and finally Shut Down.
I’ll never understand why Microsoft has steadfastly refused to add a one-click Shut Down button to the desktop. Fortunately, there are faster ways to turn off your computer.
Option 1: Reprogram the power button
When you’re ready to shut down your PC, why not just press the power button? Why not, indeed! Except that on most computers, that button comes preprogrammed to do something else: put the machine into sleep mode.
To remedy that, click in Windows 10’s Search field, type power, and then click Power Options in the search results that appear.
Next, in the list of options on the left, click “Choose what the power buttons do.” As you’ll see, there are two pull-down menus next to “When I press the power button” — one each for On Battery and Plugged In (unless you have a desktop, in which case you’ll probably see just the latter).
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
Click that menu, then choose Shut Down. Click the “Save changes” button and you’re done! Now, whenever you press the power button, your PC should immediately shut down.
Option 2: Add your own shutdown shortcut
If your PC’s power button is inconveniently located, or you’re just feeling indignant about Windows’ three-click shutdown process, you can add a shutdown shortcut to your desktop.
Just right-click any open space on the desktop, then click New > Shortcut. In the Location field that appears, paste in the following:
%windir%\System32\shutdown.exe /s /t 0
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
Then click Next and finish the shortcut setup. Presto! Now you’ve got a Shutdown icon; one double-click and it’s buh-bye, Windows. You can also drag it to the Taskbar for single-click shutdown goodness.
Option 3: Remember to right-click
If you right-click the Start button, you’ll see a lengthy pop-up shortcut menu — with “Shut down or sign out” right near the bottom. Mouse over that option and then click “Shut down.” This is still a slow, two-click method (with a mouse-over mixed in), but at least it’s not three clicks.
The results of right-clicking the Start button. Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
Option 4: The ol’ keyboard combo
Alt-F4 instantly makes this box appear.
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
An oldie but goodie, pressing Alt-F4 brings up a Windows shut-down menu, with the shut-down option already selected by default. (You can click the pull-down menu for other options, like Switch User and Hibernate.) Then just press Enter and you’re done.
Take note, however, that this works only when you’re viewing the desktop. Alt-F4 is actually a global “close” command, so if you’re not at the desktop, it will close whatever program is currently active. Still, for folks who prefer a keyboard command to reaching for the mouse, this is a quick two-step.
Have you found a faster/better/smarter way to shut down Windows 10? Let’s hear it in the comments!
Last updated on December 2, 2014 By Venkat
It is really annoying that Windows 7 starts up so quickly, but it doesn’t shut down as quickly as it should be. It needs to close all background programs and running processes, and then it shuts down the computer. Let us see how we can make Windows 7 to shutdown faster.
This happens to everyone: after closing all programs, you will click shutdown button and go away from Computer thinking that it will be turned off, but that’s not the case, after some time when you see, it will be still powered on and Windows 7 shows background programs needs to close click ‘Force Shutdown’ to shutdown your Computer. How much power lost due to this without user using the computer.
By default Windows 7 waits for 12 seconds to kill all the running processes while shutting down Windows. By lowering this time period to 5 seconds or less we can make Windows 7 to turn off quickly.
Forcing Windows 7 shutdown faster without waiting for background programs to close
1.Click start and type “regedit”, and make sure you run registry editor as administrator.
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control and double click WaitToKillServiceTimeout entry on the right side, and enter its value as 5000 (5 seconds) or lower to that.
3. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, on the right pane, create a new string value named WaitToKillAppTimeout and give its value as 5000. If that string already exists, then double click it and enter its value as 5000 or lower to that.
Don’t enter too lower values, you at least need to give some chance for programs to close.
Restart your Computer for changes to take effect and you will observe definite speed in Windows 7 shutdown next time.
You can also use command line switch shutdown /f /s /t 0 by creating shortcut for it and use to shutdown Windows 7 faster.
Practically always, when we are going to turn off the computer, we usually do it from the start menu, choosing the “Shut down” option . This possibility has been present since the first versions of the operating system and, in Windows 10, of course, it is also the fastest way to turn off the PC. However, one of the new features introduced in this version of Windows, specifically the Quick Start , has changed the way the PC is turned off. Instead of shutting down completely, it goes into a kind of hibernation, so it can boot up faster the next time. This has its advantages, but we users are interested.
Windows Fast Boot is a kind of simple “hibernation”. Instead of dumping all the RAM to the hard disk, as with this one, when we turn off the PC what we do is close all the programs that are open on the computer, but not destroy the instance of the Kernel in memory. In this way, the Windows kernel is saved on the hard disk, or SSD, and, when we reboot the PC, it is restored to memory instead of being opened from scratch.
There are many situations in which we are interested in shutting down the computer completely. For example, if we use several operating systems and we want to switch from one to another. Also in the event that our computer is experiencing problems and we want to reload the Kernel from scratch to solve them. Or simply because we are not interested in using the Windows Quick Start function.
Therefore, below we are going to explain several ways with which we can make Windows turn off completely.
Restarting the PC completely shuts down Windows and turns it back on
The quickest option to completely shut down the PC and turn it on again is to use the “Restart” option. By using this option, instead of dumping the Windows Kernel to memory and reloading it, the PC shuts down completely and reloads all the information from scratch.
It is true that when using the “Restart” option , Windows will automatically turn on again without us being able to do anything to prevent it. And, if afterwards we choose the option to turn off the PC again, this shutdown will not be complete again.
For this reason, the “Restart” option can basically help us to solve problems with the PC, but as a solution to always shut down the computer completely it does not work for us.
Disable Quick Launch
The Quick Start option is enabled by default in Windows 10. But, if we want, we can disable it. To do this, what we must do is open the Windows 10 Control Panel, and there move to the directory ” Hardware and sound> Power options” . Once here, click on “Choose the behavior of the Start / Shutdown buttons” that appears on the left of the window.
Here we can see a new configuration menu of the operating system from which we can configure the startup and shutdown options of the operating system. In the section “Shutdown configuration” we can see the different options that we can configure. The one that interests us, to allow Windows 10 to shut down completely, is to ” Enable fast startup “.
By default, this box will be checked. Therefore, we will have to disable it to disable this feature. Windows will probably ask us for Administrator permissions before unchecking this box. If we want, we can also take the opportunity to disable the “hibernate” option so that it does not appear in the start menu along with the other options.
Run a CMD command to shut down Windows
The “shutdown” command allows us to shut down the computer from any command prompt window, or CMD. This command can be customized with a wide variety of parameters depending on whether we want it to do one thing or another. Of course, one of the parameters offers us the possibility of completely shutting down the computer without having to resort to other techniques and without deactivating the Quick Start.
To do this, the command that we must execute on our PC is:
shutdown /s /f /t 0
The parameter “s” indicates that we want to turn off the PC, “f” that we want to force the closure of all open applications, and “t” the delay time, in seconds, until the shutdown (which, being zero, is instant ).
By running this command, Windows 10 will shut down completely instantly. And when we turn it back on, it will load the Windows kernel again to solve possible problems.
Create a shortcut
Running this command in CMD every time is impractical and not at all intuitive. Therefore, if we liked this option, we will be able to create our own shortcut with which we can turn off the computer completely by double clicking on an icon.
To do this, what we must do is place ourselves in the space where we want to create this icon (for example, on the desktop), right-click and choose the ” New> Shortcut ” option. In the location we will place the previous command, as we execute it in CMD, and we will choose the name that we want to give the new shortcut.
Ready. Now we will have an icon on our desktop, which, when double-clicking it, will take care of turning off our PC completely.
Use the Shift key when shutting down the PC
Another trick that is also very simple and quick to remember and apply is to use the shift key from the shutdown option in the start menu. Instead of doing Start> Shut down, what we can do to shut down the PC completely instead of “half” is to hold down the shift key on the keyboard while we click on the option to shut down Windows.
We will not see anything, but Windows will detect this pulse and, instead of performing the shutdown prepared for the quick start, it will proceed to perform a complete shutdown of the PC. The next time we turn on the computer again, it will start from scratch.
A great alternative in case you want to perform sporadic complete shutdowns, but continue to use the Windows Quick Start function regularly.
Another version of Windows, another silly three-click process just to shut down your PC. Here are some faster alternatives.
It must be a point of pride in Redmond that even after all these years, you still have to click “Start” to shut down your computer.
Granted, the Start button is no longer labeled that way, having evolved into a Windows-logo button back in Vista. But that’s still what it’s called, and still how Microsoft refers to it. So even in Windows 10, you have to click “Start” to shut down your PC. Then you click Power, and finally Shut Down.
I’ll never understand why Microsoft has steadfastly refused to add a one-click Shut Down button to the desktop. Fortunately, there are faster ways to turn off your computer.
Option 1: Reprogram the power button
When you’re ready to shut down your PC, why not just press the power button? Why not, indeed! Except that on most computers, that button comes preprogrammed to do something else: put the machine into sleep mode.
To remedy that, click in Windows 10’s Search field, type power, and then click Power Options in the search results that appear.
Next, in the list of options on the left, click “Choose what the power buttons do.” As you’ll see, there are two pull-down menus next to “When I press the power button” — one each for On Battery and Plugged In (unless you have a desktop, in which case you’ll probably see just the latter).
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
Click that menu, then choose Shut Down. Click the “Save changes” button and you’re done! Now, whenever you press the power button, your PC should immediately shut down.
Option 2: Add your own shutdown shortcut
If your PC’s power button is inconveniently located, or you’re just feeling indignant about Windows’ three-click shutdown process, you can add a shutdown shortcut to your desktop.
Just right-click any open space on the desktop, then click New > Shortcut. In the Location field that appears, paste in the following:
%windir%\System32\shutdown.exe /s /t 0
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
Then click Next and finish the shortcut setup. Presto! Now you’ve got a Shutdown icon; one double-click and it’s buh-bye, Windows. You can also drag it to the Taskbar for single-click shutdown goodness.
Option 3: Remember to right-click
If you right-click the Start button, you’ll see a lengthy pop-up shortcut menu — with “Shut down or sign out” right near the bottom. Mouse over that option and then click “Shut down.” This is still a slow, two-click method (with a mouse-over mixed in), but at least it’s not three clicks.
The results of right-clicking the Start button. Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
Option 4: The ol’ keyboard combo
Alt-F4 instantly makes this box appear.
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
An oldie but goodie, pressing Alt-F4 brings up a Windows shut-down menu, with the shut-down option already selected by default. (You can click the pull-down menu for other options, like Switch User and Hibernate.) Then just press Enter and you’re done.
Take note, however, that this works only when you’re viewing the desktop. Alt-F4 is actually a global “close” command, so if you’re not at the desktop, it will close whatever program is currently active. Still, for folks who prefer a keyboard command to reaching for the mouse, this is a quick two-step.
Have you found a faster/better/smarter way to shut down Windows 10? Let’s hear it in the comments!
Make your PC faster without installing an SSD.
If your formerly shiny, new Windows 10 PC has begun to lose some of its luster, there are ways to put a little pep back in its step. Here are some quick, easy ways to improve its performance without swapping out any hardware.
1. Go opaque
Windows 10’s new Start menu is sexy and see-through, but that transparency will cost you some (slight) resources. To reclaim those resources, you can disable transparency in the Start menu, taskbar, and action center: Open the Settings menu and go to Personalization > Colors and toggle off Make Start, taskbar, and action center transparent.
2. No special effects
Making the Start menu, taskbar, and action center transparent is one thing, but Windows 10 still has a lot of other snazzy, built-in special effects. To really go bare-bones on the special effects, right-click the Start button and click System.
Click Advanced system settings to open the System Properties menu. On the Advanced tab under Performance, click Settings.
This will open the Performance Options menu. In the Visual Effects tab, either choose Adjust for best performance to turn off all unnecessary animations and special effects, or choose Custom: and deselect the visual effects you think can live without. When you’re finished, click OK to apply your changes.
3. Disable Startup programs
If your PC is taking a long time to boot up — and you’ve enabled Fast Startup and everything — you may have too many programs starting up when you turn your computer on. To fix this, right-click on the Start button and click Task Manager. Click the Startup tab (click More details if you don’t see the Startup tab) and peruse the list of programs that start up with your computer. If you see a program that doesn’t need to be there, right-click it and click Disable. You can also arrange the list of programs by Startup impact, if you’d like to see the programs that are taking up the most resources (and time).
4. Find (and fix) the problem
Windows 10 has a built-in performance troubleshooter that can help you find and fix any problems that might be affecting your PC’s speed. To open the troubleshooter, right-click on the Start button and click Control Panel. Under Security and Maintenance at the top, click Troubleshoot common computer problems. Next, under System and Security, click Run maintenance tasks.
Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET
5. Reduce the Boot Menu Time-out
When your computer starts up, the boot menu is displayed for a certain amount of time before the operating system loads. This gives you time to do things like start Windows in Safe Mode. You can shave a few seconds off your startup time by changing the boot menu time-out, which is set to 30 seconds by default.
To do this, right-click on the Start button and click Control Panel. Go to System > Advanced system settings, and, under Startup and Recovery, click Settings.
Next to Time to display list of operating systems:, change the value from 30 seconds to 10 seconds and click OK.
6. No tipping
In an effort to be helpful, Windows 10 will sometimes give you tips on how to get the most out of the OS. It scans your computer in order to do this, a process that can have a slight impact on performance. To turn off these tips, go to Start > Settings > System > Notifications & actions and toggle off Get tips, tricks and suggestions as you use Windows.
7. Run Disk Cleanup
This one’s a win-win. It’ll improve performance and free up space on your hard drive. Disk Cleanup has been around forever, but this trusted Windows utility can still help clean out the temporary files, installers and other junk littering your hard drive. To run it, just search for Disk Cleanup, run it and click the button labeled Clean up system files.
8. Eradicate bloatware
If your PC came with preinstalled apps you don’t want or need, get rid of them. Same goes for any apps you installed that you later found to be of little or no use. Right-click the Start menu, choose Control Panel and under the Programs header, click Uninstall a program. Peruse the list from time to time and select the programs you no longer need and click Uninstall at the top of the list.
9. Power plan
Make sure you aren’t using a Power saver plan if you don’t need to. Even desktops will sometimes feature a power-saver option, which doesn’t do you any good unless you are trying to conserve battery life. Open the Control Panel and go to Hardware and Sound > Power Options to see which power plan you are currently using. For better performance, make sure you are using a High Performance or Balanced plan (or a plan from the PC manufacturer that says it’s balanced).
10. Restart your PC
Is speeding up your computer as simple as. restarting it? Maybe. Restarting your PC clears out its memory and stops any processes that might be taking up resources. Also, shutting down your computer is not the same as restarting it — shutdown is affected by Windows 10’s Fast Startup, which saves a snapshot of your PC and its processes in a hiberfile for faster boot-up. Restart is not affected by Fast Startup, so if you have Fast Startup enabled, restarting your PC is the only way to fully clear the memory and shutdown processes.
Editors’ note: This story was originally published on April 12, 2016, and has since been updated with more tips.
