performance optimization

If your Windows 11 PC has started to feel sluggish, the good news is that most slowdowns are fixable without a full reinstall or expensive upgrades — and a concise, prioritized plan will get you back to a responsive machine in an afternoon. Background / Overview Windows grows more feature-rich...

Microsoft's pledge to “swarm” Windows 11 engineers onto core issues marks a rare admission: the OS's reputation for reliability and performance has eroded enough that leadership is reallocating resources to repair fundamentals rather than ship new features. The company says 2026 will be the year...

Windows 11 quietly ships with a built‑in "efficiency" switch that can free up CPU cycles, reduce memory contention, and sometimes make a sluggish PC feel dramatically more responsive — and you can enable it for individual apps in seconds using Task Manager. Background / Overview Windows...

Windows 11’s File Explorer can feel sluggish in ways that seem impossible on modern hardware: slow folder opens, stuttering when scrolling, and delays when right‑clicking files. The culprit is often not a failing SSD or a clogged background process but a decades‑old feature — automatic folder...

Microsoft Edge has quietly morphed from a Windows default many users avoided into a genuinely competitive browser for Windows 11 — and not simply because it ships with the OS. Over the past several years Microsoft rebuilt Edge atop the Chromium engine, then layered deep Windows integration...

Microsoft’s latest Insider builds show a focused, pragmatic effort to make File Explorer feel faster and less resource‑hungry: an optional background preload to shave cold‑start delays, a decluttered right‑click menu that tucks infrequent commands into a new “Manage file” submenu, and an...

Microsoft’s recent Insider update trims File Explorer’s RAM appetite by targeting the search pipeline, and the change is both pragmatic and narrow: Microsoft adjusted the Windows Search indexer to stop doing redundant work during indexing, which reduces transient memory, CPU and disk I/O when...

If you own a Samsung Galaxy and want an immediate, measurable improvement in everyday responsiveness, battery behavior, and privacy, changing a handful of system settings will deliver the biggest payoff without buying new hardware. Background — why a few settings matter Samsung’s One UI is...

If your Windows 11 PC feels slower than it used to, a focused set of system, power, driver, and GPU tweaks can often reclaim significant responsiveness without buying new hardware — this practical guide distills a 12-step framework into clear actions, explains when each tweak helps the most, and...

If your Windows 11 PC feels sluggish, cluttered, or slow to boot, a focused cache and temporary‑files cleanup can often deliver a fast, low‑risk performance uplift without reinstalling the OS or buying new hardware. The steps are simple, built into Windows, and — when used in the proper order —...

Microsoft’s plan to split Teams’ calling stack into a separate child process is finally rolling out as an operational change that could blunt the worst of the desktop client’s sluggish call start times and meeting-time resource spikes — but it’s a pragmatic containment strategy, not a cure for...

Storage Sense is the quiet Windows 11 background tool that will automatically clean up temporary files, empty your Recycle Bin, remove stale downloads when asked, and even convert locally cached OneDrive files to online‑only — and enabling it correctly can keep a busy PC feeling responsive...

MSI’s Claw handhelds have officially gained support for Windows 11’s Xbox Full Screen Experience, a console‑style shell Microsoft is rolling out through the Windows Insider program — and MSI says the change brings measurable memory savings and modest framerate uplifts that make the Claw feel...

Microsoft is quietly testing a background preloading feature for File Explorer in Windows 11 that aims to eliminate the familiar "cold start" pause and make the file manager appear ready the instant a user clicks its icon. Background File Explorer has long been a cornerstone of the Windows...

Microsoft is quietly testing a blunt — and controversial — fix for File Explorer’s long-standing sluggishness: keep parts of the file manager permanently warmed and resident in memory so folders open instantly. The change arrives in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7271 and is being rolled...

I’ve used four simple, built‑in Windows 11 tweaks to bring sluggish machines back to life — no third‑party cleaners, no registry hacks, no risky downloads — and you can apply the same steps in 10–15 minutes to make your laptop or desktop feel noticeably snappier. Background / Overview Windows 11...

Microsoft has shipped .NET 10 — an LTS release Microsoft calls “the most productive, modern, secure, intelligent, and performant release of .NET yet” — and the ecosystem around it (Visual Studio, C# tooling, and conference content) shipped in lockstep during .NET Conf 2025. Overview .NET 10 is a...

Windows 11 ships with a lot of convenience and integrated services — and with them come background tasks, telemetry, and promotional nudges that can slow boot times, eat RAM, and leak more data than some users want. The following feature checklist distills the top 10 things you should consider...

I cut my Windows boot time without spending a dime by methodically attacking the real bottlenecks—firmware/POST, kernel startup, storage behavior, and hidden autostarts—rather than only toggling obvious Startup items, and the result was a noticeably faster, more predictable boot without buying...

If your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick has turned into a sluggish slideshow, the problem is almost always a stack of small issues adding up: background services, accumulated cache, automatic updates, autoplaying previews and ads, and a handful of feature toggles that chew CPU or memory on every boot...