How to speed up your Windows 10 computer in 7 different ways

There's a good chance your computer came with a lot of unwanted programs that run in the background and slow things down. Often called "bloatware," they rarely serve a useful purpose.

You should take a few minutes to uninstall programs you don't want or need from your computer. To do that, follow the steps in the article "How to properly uninstall programs on Windows 10, to protect your computer and free up space."

Windows 10 has a lot of special effects — some very obvious, others quite subtle. They make the experience of using your computer more fun and enjoyable, but they might also be slowing your PC down, especially if it's older or has a slow processor.

Here's how to turn off some of these special effects.

1. Click the Start button and start the Control Panel.

2. Click "System."

3. Click "Advanced system settings."

4. On the System Properties window, make sure you are on the Advanced tab and click "Settings."

5. Here you can manually turn off special effects or just click "Adjust for best performance."

You might not have noticed, but there are some subtle transparency effects built into various surfaces in Windows. Open the Start menu, for example, and you should see a faint, blurred impression of whatever lies behind it.

If you don't want to sacrifice processing speed for such a small effect, you can turn it off entirely (and probably not notice the aesthetic difference).

1. Click the Start button and click the Settings icon, which is shaped like a gear and is right above the Power icon.

2. Click "Personalization."

3. Click "Colors."

4. Scroll down and turn off "Transparency effects" by sliding the switch to the left.

Your computer might be running at something less than full speed, depending upon how your power management controls are set.

Designed to make your laptop battery last longer, Windows offers several power plans that deliberately slow down your PC. Here's how to choose a higher power plan:

1. Click the Start button and start the Control Panel.

2. Click "Power Options."

3. For the best overall processing speed, choose "High performance."

Make sure your computer stays up to date. Microsoft issues regular patches and updates for Windows, and while many of these are related to improving your computer's security (which is also important), some also improve performance.

To see if there are updates waiting to be installed:

1. Click the Start button and click the Settings icon, which is shaped like a gear and is right above the Power icon.

2. Click "Update & security."

3. You can check for updates or install and updates waiting to be installed.

Finally, you can dramatically improve the performance of your computer by increasing its memory and storage.

If your computer has a traditional hard drive — one with spinning metal platters — replacing it with a solid-state drive (SSD) can make a world of difference. An SSD has the same kind of memory as a USB flash drive (though much, much faster) and it will enable Windows to boot several times faster and programs to start in a fraction of the time.

Adding an SSD is the single biggest improvement you can make to a PC, and it can make a bigger difference than upgrading to a computer with a faster processor.

In addition, if you do a lot of resource-intensive tasks with your computer, like photo editing, video production, or gaming, adding additional memory can help as well. You should have no less than 4GB of RAM in your computer for Windows to run efficiently, but additional memory can improve performance.

• 'How much is Windows 10?': A cost breakdown of all three versions of Windows 10
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• How to boot your Windows 10 computer into 'Safe Mode,' to diagnose and troubleshoot problems
• How to properly uninstall programs on Windows 10, to protect your computer and free up space