5 popular Windows 10 settings tweaks you need to quit using
5 popular Windows 10 settings tweaks
you need to quit using
The longer you've used Windows the
more likely you are to have built up a collection of tips and tricks for
squeezing out extra performance. Here are five popular techniques that haven't
stood the test of time and deserve to be retired.
Some tweaks just aren't worth it.
All that hands-on time is both a blessing and a curse, it turns
out. As Windows has evolved, many of the tips, tricks, and secrets that were
once essential for enhancing performance and reliability have become
irrelevant.
And yet those lessons, once learned, are hard to unlearn. That's
particularly true when habits are based on traumatic experiences, like a failed
BIOS update that bricked a Windows PC, or when your favorite system tweaks have
been engraved into your memory like a pilot's pre-flight checklist.
As Windows 10 has evolved over the past few years, I've been
paying close attention to feedback from readers, and I've assembled this list
of outdated ideas that are still stubbornly popular.
IT'S OK TO UPDATE YOUR FIRMWARE
One of my most common recommendations for people upgrading to
Windows 10 is to check for system firmware updates. This is especially
important when you're working with a system that was designed before the
release of Windows 10 in 2015. As I learned from troubleshooting issues readers
reported to me, several manufacturers released firmware updates in the months
after that launch specifically to address upgrade issues.
The trouble is, too many people are absolutely petrified at the
prospect of updating their system firmware. That's especially true for people
who've been using PCs for decades and who have terrible memories of
"bricking" a PC with a BIOS update that goes wrong.
In the 1990s and 2000s, that was a legitimate concern, as BIOS
code was stored in rewritable flash memory on the motherboard. On that type of
PC, flashing the BIOS often required rebooting with an MS-DOS disk, and if the
process didn't go perfectly, you had to fuss with DIP switches on the
motherboard and hope you could recover.
Beginning
with Windows 8 in 2012, Windows uses an update mechanism that delivers update
packages to a known system location; the UEFI firmware then installs the update
package on its own, after a restart. This architecture makes UEFI updates far more reliable than those
old BIOS updates, with error-checking mechanisms that can roll back
unsuccessful changes automatically.
The bottom line is that on all but the most ancient PCs,
firmware updates are no longer to be feared. If they're not delivered
automatically via Windows Update, it's worth checking the manufacturer's
support site for firmware updates before any major software update.
DON'T MESS WITH THE PAGE FILE
Since its
earliest days, Windows has used a page file (sometimes called
a paging
file*), a hidden file in the root of the system drive that caches
pages of memory so they can be accessed quickly. In olden days, this hidden
file was sometimes called the swap file**, and its primary purpose
was to provide virtual memory so that apps didn't crash when you ran out of
physical memory.
On a clean
install, Windows 10 sets the page file to be managed automatically. This is the
best practice and I recommend that you leave that setting exactly where it is.
To see your current settings, click in the search box or press Windows key + R
to open the Run dialog box, and then enter the command systempropertiesperformance (with
no spaces). That opens the Performance Options dialog box. Click the Advanced
tab and then, in the Virtual Memory section, click Change to open the dialog
box shown here.
You can still find well-meaning but misguided online advice to
tweak the page file in one of two ways: Some people argue that you can reclaim
disk space by eliminating the page file completely (if, for example, you have
32 GB of physical memory and are unlikely to ever need virtual memory). Others
recommend setting it to a fixed size, so that you don't experience a
performance hit when it automatically resizes itself.
Neither one
is a good idea, for the simple reason that in the Windows 10 era, the role of the page file has evolved. In
addition to enabling virtual memory, the page file provides a place for crash
dump files, which are created when Windows experiences a Blue Screen of Death.
It's possible to envision edge cases where tweaking the page
file makes sense (hello, commenters!), but those examples are vanishingly rare.
* The official documentation at docs.microsoft.com, which was
updated just a few weeks ago, calls it a page file; the Windows dialog box,
which dates back more than 20 years, calls it a paging file.
** Because Microsoft loves confusing its customers, Windows 10
actually includes a tiny file called swapfile.sys. It holds pages of memory
swapped from so-called modern apps and has nothing to do with the systemwide
virtual memory settings. Although you can tweak a registry setting to manage
this file, I cannot think of a reason why any rational person would want to do
this.
LET DEFRAGGING TAKE CARE OF ITSELF
In the Dark Ages of the PC era, defragmenting a hard disk was
one of the most important performance-enhancing tasks you could do to speed up
your PC. The combination of a slow storage bus (relative to modern technology),
slow rotating disk speeds (ditto), and dumb file systems meant that regularly
rearranging the physical placement of files on the disk actually made a
noticeable impact.
Over the years, two noteworthy things have happened in the
Windows ecosystem. System storage has become dramatically faster, especially as
solid state drives have replaced conventional hard disks, and Microsoft
engineers have gotten better at automatically managing the data on all of those
types of disks.
In Windows 10, the Defrag.exe command is now officially named
Defragment and Optimize Drives. It runs automatically, as part of a scheduled
task. On conventional hard disks, Defrag does what it has always done,
rearranging data so that it can be retrieved most efficiently. On SSDs, where
the traditional defragging activity doesn't apply, running Defrag performs the
Trim command, which wipes blocks of storage that are no longer in use and can
be freed up for new data.
(The real old-timers in the audience will remember the MS-DOS
Defrag utility, with its crude but mesmerizing Tetris-style display of colored
blocks that shifted to represent files being defragged. The icon for the
Defrag.exe command still includes those colorful blocks.)
To check the
status of all currently available drives, type defrag in
the search box and then click Defragment and Optimize Drives from the results
list. The list of volumes displayed in the Optimize Drives window clearly
indicates the media type and defrag/optimization status for each one.
The Defrag and Optimize utility does its work automatically. You
shouldn't have to intervene manually.
UNINSTALL YOUR REGISTRY CLEANER
This particular class of what I used to call "snake oil
software" has declined in popularity in recent years. But it's not dead
yet, which is unfortunate.
The concept behind registry-cleaning tools is simple. It starts
with the belief that the Windows registry is a chaotic kludge, and then leaps
from that assumption to a belief that cleaning out unnecessary or unused
registry entries can magically speed up everyday activities and prevent
crashes.
Now, one can put forward all sorts of logical critiques of the
Windows registry. It is indeed occasionally messy. But the idea that software
can magically identify unneeded and unwanted entries in this configuration
database is charmingly quaint. And the idea that you can improve performance by
removing one or more registry entries that were left behind by a sloppy
uninstaller is decidedly illogical.
I have never seen a registry cleaner that could justify its
existence with actual data proving performance improvements. I have, on the
other hand, seen multiple examples of PCs that were corrupted or crashed by
aggressive "cleaning" that removed useful registry keys.
If someone offers you a registry cleaner, just say no.
TRY NOT TO OBSESS OVER TELEMETRY
I hear much
less about telemetry these days than I did a few years ago, when a handful of
ill-informed commentators harvested truckloads of pageviews by scaremongering
about Microsoft "spying" on PCs running Windows 10.
The reality is far more prosaic. Microsoft, like most software
companies in our hyper-connected world, relies on a steady stream of data to
determine how well its products are working. With more than 900 million PCs
running Windows 10, having that data in real time is essential to identify
problems in the ecosystem, especially those involving failures in the automatic
update process.
To be fair,
that initial burst of negative publicity did inspire some welcome transparency
from Redmond. All of the information that's collected as part of the telemetry
process is now fully documented, and a Diagnostic Data Viewer app allows you to
inspect all the data that's being sent to Microsoft's telemetry servers. For
enterprise customers, Microsoft has even documented what it calls a Windows Restricted Traffic Limited Functionality Baseline to
minimize connections from Windows to Microsoft services.
Along the way, Microsoft also simplified the settings for
telemetry data. The default setting for all editions of Windows 10 is Full,
which means that the uploaded data includes some anonymized details about app
usage. If you are concerned about possible inadvertent leakage of personal
information, you can go to Settings > Privacy > Feedback &
diagnostics and change the Diagnostic And Usage Data setting to Basic.
That switch isn't enough for some folks, who recommend a
scorched-earth group of settings that disable telemetry-related services and
tasks. Naturally, a cottage industry of small utility developers has sprung up
to automate those settings, which can have a range of unfortunate side-effects,
including blocking access to updates.
If you're
genuinely concerned about privacy, there's a long list of settings to adjust
and behaviors to modify, and telemetry data is pretty far down that list. For
details, see my "Windows 10 privacy
guide: How to take control."
Do you have additional items to suggest for this list? Feel free
to leave a comment below, or use the contact form (click the envelope icon next
to my by-line) to send me a private message. If you want a reply, be sure to
include your correct email address; that information isn't used for any other
purpose.
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