Solved What are top things to speed up windows 24H2?

KevTech said:

Not sure I want to take a chance on 1.5% compromised.
Myself I now use Eset after many years with Kaspersky until the USA banned it.

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Up to you. I personally hate subscriptions. If you want to cycle your antivirus every time a new month of testing rolls around that's up to you.

I don't think 1.5% is worth fussing over. Especially because that is based on just their samples they test with.

Common sense matters more.

Your never going to stop all threats, so I don't think it's worth paying for an AV.

There was a time when defender was useless, but since a couple years ago they really picked up the ball.

Downloading anything new with the virus total extension is honestly the best bet. Keeping software up to date etc, securing your router matters way more than antivirus.

andrew129260 said:

Downloading anything new with the virus total extension is honestly the best bet. Keeping software up to date etc, securing your router matters way more than antivirus.

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Not to mention common sense! One of the best protections from malware is to take care in where you go on the web and what you click on.

andrew129260 said:

Your never going to stop all threats, so I don't think it's worth paying for an AV.

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I don't pay for them as I am a malware tester/evaluator so get the protection for free.
Had Kaspersky for free and now Eset.

KevTech said:

I don't pay for them as I am a malware tester/evaluator so get the protection for free.
Had Kaspersky for free and now Eset.

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nice. Thats a good perk for sure.

Some other things that we can do:

• Disable BitLocker
• Disable Core Isolation
• Undervolt the CPU if possible
• Temporarily add an exclusion for the root path of each drive (C:\, D:\,...) in Windows Defender to prevent it from running full scans in the background during those moments when we don't want that but we still want to keep Defender's real-time protection active. It's generally safer than completely disabling Defender altogether when no third-party antivirus is installed. However, some users rely on different strategies some of which can be quite advanced.

Just always remember that if you go to disable things like Core Isolation and Defender's background scanning, generally it will worsen the system's vulnerability to attacks even though there's things that we can do to compensate for and/or adapt ourselves to that. Personally, I, use Sandboxie-Plus and, to some degree, use Codeberg's Narsil to harden my Firefox Portable browser, for example. And use Primo Ramdisk in Compact Mode with DMM to, among a few other things, relocate (some of) sandbox content to a ramdisk. The DMM option in Primo is what keeps it from eating up more RAM space than the combined size of the actual files stored on the ramdisk. So my other apps don't sacrifice too much of their original freedom to use additional RAM space, as I wrote my own scripts to dynamically control how much is stored on my ramdisk. It's a pragmatic combination of both manual and automated control. The copy tool used in my scripts to move data quickly to/from the ramdisk as needed is FastCopy (through its various command line options).

hdmi said:

Disable BitLocker

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Bitlocker will turn your machine into a slug, no doubt about it. One of the first things I disable, along with OneDrive which I have no need for.

cheaterslick said:

Bitlocker will turn your machine into a slug, no doubt about it. One of the first things I disable, along with OneDrive which I have no need for.

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I don't actually "need" OneDrive but I haven't completely disabled it, it just sits there idle so it doesn't slow my laptop down in any way that I can see. There's other things that can slow a Windows PC down visibly. Like refusing/neglecting to install Windows updates, driver updates, and firmware upgrades. Occasions when it does make logical sense to refuse one of these are rare. Another example is to use voidtools Everything instead of Windows Search to search for files and folders, and to remove most (or all) search locations from the Windows Search Indexer (as opposed to completely disabling the Search Indexer altogether). It helps to avoid slowdowns in File Explorer, and helps to avoid the green progress bar running constantly in the File Explorer address bar.

Additionally, ExplorerPatcher's ability to replace the "modern" File Explorer (with tabs) with the "classic" Windows 10 File Explorer (with ribbon) helps to avoid long-standing bugs whose irregular symptoms don't necessarily always seem like they are related to File Explorer. These bugs don't usually affect performance directly but they can, and do make you waste valuable time trying to troubleshoot or worse, interrupt your wokflow such a way that some work is permanently lost. The same with the (also "modern") taskbar. The taskbar currently runs a lot more stable than it once did but it still lacks some features that can be useful in terms of speeding up your workflow with enhancements like the ability to add toolbars to the taskbar so, for that, I also rely on ExplorerPatcher. And I also use Open-Shell, Windhawk, and SystemTrayMenu together with it. And I do so without running into problems of any kind.

So basically, I read through comments of "those tweaks can't be trusted" as if claiming there are no colors in a rainbow. It's really only a matter of knowing what works versus what doesn't. Simple plain.

1. Disable Defender, it worked on dozens of PCs, laptops, an instantaneous boost.
2. Disable Indexing made for XP, modern search can show results within a second.
3. Disable Effects, like transparency and shadows, they can kill even a high end PC.
4. Disable/Block AI/Copilot trying to tell you to use mouse to click on icons and etc.
5. Disable DHCP, setup a static IP and DNS, preferable a faster and safer, like Quad9.

I just checked and bitlocker is disabled on each and every one of my drives. I did that very early on but don't remember how - I think it asked me.
I did disable indexing once - couldn't find things that I normally could but that was so long ago I have forgotten what; I'll pass.
Neither AI or copilot tells me anything so I guess I have shut them off correctly though so long ago I don't remember how.
dhcp is turnkey, static IP is far from it. I'll pass. I use an ad blocking dns on my phone sometimes but on win I use uBlock Origin and Ghostery.
I use the win Explorer pretty much as-is - I only had to learn a couple new things and that makes the next change easier.
Yes, "local" login.
Yes, Win Defender is a pig. I use Bitdefender free. I have gotten no viruses. I am careful where I browse.
There are many AVs that I have tried and won't use because they gave me problems. No I don't remember what problems. There are a LOT of AVs.
I believe I shut OneDrive off because it doesn't appear anywhere.
I did upgrade to 25H2. Zero problems/changes.
My new PC is a lot faster probably only because of the old used i9-13900K that I got for it. I saved a lot there, and also on a "bent-pin" mobo. Perfect! 100%
I use Terabyte Unltd imaging occasionally just to protect myself. It's FAST. Yes I have tried others - this is my choice.

I am going to mark this solved. Thanks all!

hdmi said:

I don't actually "need" OneDrive but I haven't completely disabled it, it just sits there idle so it doesn't slow my laptop down in any way that I can see.

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I don't think OneDrive itself actually slows the machine down, but I know Bitlocker certainly does. I immediately noticed a pep that wasn't there before I disabled it for the first time. And this was all on an SSD since I haven't used any HDDs for the C:\ (OS) since 2016.

I mentioned OneDrive because now it's part of the standard package of disablements I do everytime I reimage, or when I get a new computer. No need to have it's background services still running on it, either.

cheaterslick said:

I don't think OneDrive itself actually slows the machine down, but I know Bitlocker certainly does. I immediately noticed a pep that wasn't there before I disabled it for the first time. And this was all on an SSD since I haven't used any HDDs for the C:\ (OS) since 2016.

I mentioned OneDrive because now it's part of the standard package of disablements I do everytime I reimage, or when I get a new computer. No need to have it's background services still running on it, either.

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Moving files up into the cloud consumes internet bandwidth. When they are idle, the background services barely take up any CPU power, and trying to reduce the memory footprint on a modern system that is equipped with an adequate amount of physical RAM is best described as homeopathy. Just the thought of it alone makes me feel tired (and slow... lol).

hdmi said:

Moving files up into the cloud consumes internet bandwidth. When they are idle, the background services barely take up any CPU power, and trying to reduce the memory footprint on a modern system that is equipped with an adequate amount of physical RAM is best described as homeopathy. Just the thought of it alone makes me feel tired (and slow... lol).

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Sometimes it's the principle of the thing. To get rid of what I consider useless crap.

To each his own.