-Restarting your PC often or turning it off when you are done using it is debatable on whether or not it is positive on performance. Really it comes down to personal preference. I usually shut mine down in the evening, boot up in the morning and I manually sleep it during the day when I'm not using it. My keyboard has "Wake", "Sleep", and "Power" buttons on it and I only had to change one BIOS setting to get the "Power" button to work, the other two worked automatically.
-One of the easiest things is a disk defrag. At least, it's usually the first thing I do after I get a system going and "finished". Your hard drive reads and writes a lot of data and, believe it or not, it takes up physical space on a stack of specialized disks. After a while after so many read-write-deletes your data will be scattered and your disk will have to spin more to access the data you want. A defragmenting takes all that scattered data and re-organizes it. You don't really get any more free space, but now your used space is easier to use. You can see some improvement in the speed a system runs after a defrag. There is debate on if you should defrag your SSD or not. I guess they have limited read/writes and a defrag can use a bunch of them up. I defragged mine once after initial install of all my software and I suppose I'll let it be for the rest of it's life. Additional: they supposedly write data differently since it's not a physical disk and just solid state chips and a defrag isn't very effective. Follow this File-Path to get to the Defrag included in Windows: Start-menu: All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter. *Please note that a defrag takes time. That time depends on fragmentation, size of disk, speed of disk, and amount of data on disk. Usually this operation is setup to automatically run at sometime in the middle of the night. but if you're like me and turn off your PC whenever you are done using it, it cannot perform the scheduled task.
Here we see the disk was partially fragmented
Here is is running the operation.
And here it is complete. It makes several passes for each disk you do. So if you don't need to use your PC for a while, that's the best time to run the defrag.
And here is a picture of a standard HDD just for fun.
-Optimize windows for best speed. This option disables all that fancy animated window/start-bar GUI-ness (GUI: Graphical User Interface) and returns it to a very basic Windows 95 look. All that bizz is a lot for Windows to not have to think about and can make a notable difference on your computers speed.
Click on the "Adjust Visual Effects"
Click the appropriate box
-I do not run any toolbars on my web browser. I disable and delete all of them. I set my default search engine as Google.com and I also set it as my home page. The browser boots faster, runs smoother and is a lot more stable. I do not use Internet Explorer that comes default with Windows.
-Start up. I disable all unnecessary start up programs. For example, I disable my virus scanner. I only want to use that when I want to use it. When it starts at start-up it slows my PC down considerably and when it is always running in the background it uses up RAM. However, I keep Steam running because it doesn't seem to slow down my start up and I like to have it automatically sign me in and stuff. Anyway, I disable all start-up programs I don't need. It does wonders to you boot-up time.
In the search bar on the start menu, type "MSCONFIG" then click the icon that pops up.
Go to the "startup" tab and turn off everything you don't want to run when the PC boots!
-System clean-up. If you've never done this it could be a big deal. If you do it often you wont notice anything really. But it dumps out all the old files you don't need like trash bin and temporary internet files and what-not. Follow this file-path in the Start-menu: All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup
For example: I had 399MB in my Temp folder and Disk Cleanup purged it.
Systems tools is where system Cleanup is, click on it.
It will check the system and ask you what disk to clean up.
Then you check what boxes you wanna clean up.
hit okay and...
Bam! It'll shut itself off when it's through and it's done.
-I disable remote-access. Dis-sables my computer's ability to be remote accessed by another. Its further peace-of-mind as far as system security goes and it's unnecessary software. It is really only used for re-mote IT assistance that I don't use. But it's like bricking over a door.
Right click on "Computer" and go to "Properties"
This will take you to the Control Panel Screen you need to click on "remote settings"
And uncheck that box in the remote tab!
-Last thing I do too is adjust my PC Power settings. I turn my PC off every night so I adjust it to best performance and basically disable any kind of power saving setting. If you are running a laptop or a server that is always on you will want to be more power saving conscious, but since my PC is for performance that is how I run it. Go to your Control Panel, click on "System and Security" then click on "Power options". Then check the box for best performance, or whatever suites you and your setup. You are on your own for anything more complex than that. You can click on "Change Plan Settings" and fine-tune your power plan further and fine tune it to meet your needs exactly in the "Change Advance Power Settings".
Go to the power settings in the control panel and click on "Highest Performance"
Well, that is pretty much it.
End.
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