If you are stuck with a low end, PC one of the most frustrating things is to see how Windows 10 becomes more bloated, with every single update at consumes more and more of your precious PC resources, the same ones that you usually need to run programs or In the case of this channel play games, It is no wonder that a video optimizing windows itself is very, very high on the list of most frequently requested topics Before that, Let’s start with what we are trying to achieve here. In most cases, a game will not run with the desired performance because of a GPU bottleneck and, as far as I have measured, modifying Windows will not affect GPU performance, especially in FullScreen mode.
However, Windows, even while idle uses a significant amount of RAM and has random spikes of CPU usage.
For example, I checked my Athlon 200GE computer on a fresh and fully updated.
Install of Windows, 10 and 1 6 Gb of RAM were used with nothing else open.
Along with the expected random spikes of CPU usage, 8 GB can already be low for certain games when 2 of those are used as VRAM for an integrated GPU and almost 2.
More are used by Windows On my video for the GPD Pocket 2.
I explored a more critical case where half of the RAM was taken by Windows already, But I decided to go even further.
This Intel Stick with only 2 GB of RAM.
This Intel Atom PC uses Windows 10 32 bit to save up on some memory, but even with that, it still it uses 1 2 Gb of RAM, which is more than 60 of all available memory.
So What can you do if you want to minimize that Option? 1 is to install an older but still supported, OS like Windows 7, which is tricky because it does not initially support certain components like the eMMC memory of the Pocket 2. Making installation very difficult on newer super thin PCs Option 2 is to install Windows 10 light a VERY unofficial hack of Windows 10 aimed at using as little resources as possible, which means possibly downloading an OS from a very unsecured source and having some programs do not Work correctly, I go into more depth on that option.
On my GPD Pocket 2 video.
This video is for option 3, taking your existing Windows, 10 installation and removing everything we can to make it lighter.
Let’s get started with Decrapifying Windows.
10.
Let’s discuss the conventional stuff.
First, There is a set of tips that I have seen all over the web a million times when the topic of Windows optimization is searched, such as disable all notifications go into the visual properties of windows and select the best performance In all my gaming test.
These do close to nothing, So I am going to focus on the ones where I could actually measure some difference, For example, disabling the Game bar on the options.
The annoying overlay Windows 10 has for games making sure Game DVR the Windows, software that records game footage is disabled and the typical Power Plan change into high performance.
This is especially useful on Laptops, which tends to be a bit more conservative on power use. You probably have heard all of this before The still common, but still not mentioned enough, is to check your task manager to make sure you minimize the amount of suff.
That starts every time your PC boots.
This is going to be especially important now that we are getting a million launchers for every game and you do not want all of those autostarting every time.
Your turn off Also make sure you hit run and then msconfig and check which services start with Windows as well.
Hide the Microsoft services and try to remove as many as you can from what is left Do be wary that some of these services are needed.
Steam will not run if you do not start its service from boot, and I have seen a couple of anti cheats fail as well.
So take note of what you disabled and if a program fails to start to see if you need to reenable it service.
Ok, we are done with that.
You have likely heard those before too Let’s get to the good stuff.
This debloat Windows 10 a set of scripts by Github user Warhack designer to remove as many services and as many default apps from Windows 10 as possible. Now let me make this clear: This technique does not support creator update and technically it does not support Windows Home and is technically for Administrator that know what they are doing.
I have tested this on a fully updated Windows – 10 home with good results.
However, for the love of god create a restore point before doing this back up your files, you are doing this on your own risk.
Ok, Excellent Step 1 Go to settings and update windows, hit that update button and install everything until Windows is Updated and there is nothing more to update.
This is generally good practice, because Windows might be updating in the background.
While you play a game and making your PC very slow without you, knowing why Believe me every time an update is issued, I noticed because all my test, PCs suddenly go super slow And on this case, if you run these script, while Windows is updating bad stuff, Can happen so make sure you are updated.
Step 2 Download the set of scripts from the github linked in the description Extract it and put it on a folder on a location.
You can remember easily, like C or you can leave it in downloads and struggle to navigate it to it.
As I did Because Step 3 you are going have to open Window’s Power, Shell, as administrator by right, clicking it – and here is where things get interesting.
You need to navigate to the folder called scripts inside the folder you extracted. If you have never used a command line before you can simply change directory by using the command CD CD takes you one folder up from the place you currently are.
You will like start on Windows System 32.
So if you do cd, you end up in the windows, folder and then cd to navigate to the main C driver.
You can also use CD to go into a folder accessible from where you are located by doing cd.
Nameofthefolder Use this to navigate to the scripts.
Folder that you extracted In there, you need to do this command to enable all scripts, and these two commands to unblock the scripts in that folder.
You will have to press Y on a prompt to confirm this.
If you use the ls command, you will see a set of scripts with very descriptive names that you can all run, And you run it simply by writing its full name with the extension and pressing enter.
You will occasionally have to follow some instructions and type R to run a script.
These scripts, no only will disable a lot of background telemetry services, but remove a ton of default apps from the system. One of them will disable windows defender, which can use a fair bit of background power, but be aware that you will be basically without an antivirus, so only use it.
If you know what you are doing and not downloading stuff from unknown sources, It will take some time to run each script and the windows manager will reboot when you run the last one.
There is also this code, snippet by GitHub user matthewjberger.
That does overlaps.
Some of what we have already done, but also disables, some extra services as well.
This one is easier.
All you need to do is to save its contents on a bat file, then open a command line as administrator and navigate to where that bat is stored and write its name.
That was a mouthful, but the results are good news.
You will notice that without search the start, menu is a bit harder to use.
So I will also link to a program that substitutes that, for the classic start menu of Windows 7 And the numbers speak for themselves. On my base, 8 GB PC usage dropped from 1 6, all the way to 1 1 Woa.
That is going to be useful for VRAM.
The more extreme case of the intel stick usage went from 1 2 to 0 7, which means we have more than a half the RAM for games.
How good is that, While the effects of the lowered CPU usage are going to be harder to notice due to the fact that anything we play on this is going to be severely GPU bottlenecked.
We can still see how now we have more room to avoid running out of memory or how CPU spikes are greatly reduced.
Tomb Raider running on 800×600 is a good example.
I applied the changes documented in its own video and saw a resulting average of over 30 fps on the benchmark, limited bu.
The tiny integrated GPU of this thing, However, keep in mind that, when using integrated GPUs, the regular RAM is also used as VRAM, which increases the overall memory used by a game and when we jump into actual game with actual combat, you start seeing that memory usage Climb closer to the all the memory available, and yet the game does not crash or stutter.
So this is a great example of how that extra memory gained from windows is proving in handy.
A harder example is Rocket League As time goes on as many multiplayer games do. I have noticed that this game has increased its ram usage quite a bit So much that even after executing all these scripts, if I ran the game with afterburner, it would exit with out of memory error, as I discovered on the test stream for this video.
Oh god, I am have not played this game in a while, So fun, but RUN OUT OF VIDEO MEMORY.
Ok, We are doing fine.
This is an excellent beginning.
Thankfully, by closing afterburner and relying purely on the in game, FPS meter, we did actually manage to free up enough memory to actually play this game for a full hour without any crashes.
During the matches that I all streamed here on YouTube, I did have to lower the resolution dramatically using the internal scaler on the file, as explained in a video.
I did a fair bit ago for this game, but apart from the GPU bottleneck, there was definitely enough RAM to play the game Most of the time That actually worked.
Wow and the game hasn’t crashed Nevermind HAHAHA.
I had to talk didn’t.
I Hahaha There was still a possibility of the game crashing while unloading after a match, but after decrapifying windows and removing afterburner, it did work and did not crash in the middle of a single match and that, if anything is a sign of how these changes can Help you, Oh, we are going to have a much harder time with this. One Oh, come on.
My MOMENT HAS ARRIVED: YES HAHAHA.
Yes, AMAZING, OOOH S COME ON Beautiful.
It is so easy to understand yet so hard to actually play competently and I am dead.
So take note of these scripts.
Maybe you can customize Windows to get the best out of your low end PC and with all that newfound space left by that cleanup.
What should you install? Maybe something for your security, Maybe install Dashlane Haha.
That was a good transition.
Ok for real Dashlane is the second thing I install on any fresh OS install at this point and, quite honestly it is a godsend.
Did you hear that 2 2 Billion passwords and email combinations are floating in the dark web? These days, I have been checking some of the websites monitoring the leak and there are several instances of passwords associated with the email that I use for my youtube channel. If I had continued using the same password for everything as I used to do years ago, I would be screwed, But I am not The way Dashlane works is that it helps generates a safe password for your accounts and puts them in encrypted storage.
So you only need to remember your master password and nothing else.
Not even dashlane knows your master password, so even if they get hacked your passwords are safe.
Also, basic Dashlane is free.
You can get premium which, as I have said in the past, I personally pay and use every day, which means your encrypted storage get synced between devices.
So you can also use it in your phone use, an exclusive VPN for public connections or my favourite service dark web monitoring.
That tells you one when one of your passwords has been leaked online like those terrifying headlines, If you want to give it a try, 200 people to use the code on screen get a 10 discount Seriously.
It is less 5 a month.
If you work online and a password leak could literally mean going bankrupt.
It is nothing for a zero effort layer of security. Thank you to them for sponsoring this video and you for watching this and stream and not spamming the chat with video request and understanding that I am just a guy making videos and not some game service for you to yell at.
I should take a break .
