SysInternals is a suite of powerful Windows utilities from Microsoft that offers various tools to help optimize, troubleshoot, and monitor your PC. To access these apps, you can opt to download the SysInternals Suite package from the dedicated Microsoft SysInternals Learn page, or you can download each of the tools individually. The suite includes 74 tools, and most of them are mostly useful for troubleshooting purposes, but I picked the ones that will help you optimize your PC.

👁 Laptop running Windows
9 SysInternals tools that should be built into Windows

Microsoft, you have the tools, why not build them into the OS?

5 AutoRuns

It helps you clear background processes and startup apps

Autoruns is arguably the most useful tool for system optimization because it helps you quickly identify background processes you don’t need and even obsolete entries from the registry.

A click on any entry will provide you with all the necessary information about it, such as the publisher or the path of the file in question.

For instance, it highlights potentially harmful entries and files that are not found on the system. Probably you uninstalled the software, but the uninstaller didn’t remove its entry from the registry.

Moreover, the tool has a Drivers tab where you can see all the installed drivers on your system. That is extremely useful in itself, but it also highlights the publisher’s certifications and highlights the drivers with issues. This way, you can troubleshoot potential problems and get rid of unverified drivers.

Once you install the SysInternals Suite, you will find Autoruns in the Start menu, but it’s easier to press Win + R, type Autoruns.exe, and press Enter to launch it.

4 TCPView

See everything happening on your network

If some of the apps that use an internet connection are a bit slow, that might be because some background processes are using your bandwidth. You can see everything that’s going on with your network connection by using TCPView.

It’s a monitoring tool that allows you to see all the information about TCP and UDP connections live. TCPView even has categories for v4 and v6 connections, the ports they are using, and the date and time a connection was created.

Even more, if you scroll right in the window you will even get information about sent and received packets. In case you’re a sys admin, you will love customizing the monitoring states and the fact that you can just kill the processes that bite into your bandwidth.

To launch TCPView, just look for it in the Start menu, or press Win + R, type tcpview.exe, and press Enter.

3 RamMap

An amped-up Task Manager

Task Manager is a great tool to manage RAM usage on your PC, but if you want more information, RamMap is the tool to use.

The tool allows you to drill down into individual processes and view their memory consumption in detail. You can see how much memory each process is using, broken down by type (e.g., private, shared, mapped files). This way, you can quickly identify memory-hogging applications or diagnose memory leaks.

But that’s not all. RamMap also allows you to empty the memory. There are three possible choices you can use:

  • Empty Working Sets: It clears the working set of processes and frees up memory used by idle applications.
  • Empty Standby Lists: It clears the cached data from the standby list, making more memory available for active processes.
  • Empty Modified Lists: It forces the modified pages to be written to disk, freeing up memory.

In fact, there are 5, but you shouldn’t mess with Empty System Working Set and Empty Priority 0 Snadby List because they might create instabilities.

In a few words, RamMap is a great tool to optimize your PC by freeing the RAM of useless processes.

As with the tools above, to launch RamMap, you can do so from the Start menu, or by pressing Win + R, typing rammap.exe, and pressing Enter.

2 DiskView

A hard drive assessment tool

If you want to see what’s happening with your hard drive with pinpoint accuracy, you should launch DiskView.

After scanning your drive, the tool displays a color-coded map of your disk's sectors, showing how each sector is being used. This allows you to see exactly where files are stored on the disk and identify areas of fragmentation or unused space.

If you zoom in and pick a block or a cluster, it will show you the exact program or file that is using it.

The beauty of this app is that it provides a way to identify fragmented files, which can degrade disk performance due to scattered data. That will also tell you if it’s time to defragment your HDD to optimize its performance.

Of course, it’s not very useful if you have an SSD, but DiskView can still help you understand how data is distributed across the drive. For SSD users, we have a dedicated guide on how to optimize the SSD for longevity and performance.

As usual, you can find the app in the Start menu, or launch it by pressing Win + R, typing diskview.exe, and pressing Enter.

1 CacheSet

Clearing the system cache with a single click

CacheSet was developed to help you configure and manage the Windows file system cache. So, you can use it to fine-tune how Windows handles cached data. Windows automatically manages the file system cache based on available system resources, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do better.

By changing the minimum and maximum working set size, and the cache flush intervals, you can really optimize the performance of the system. For instance, if you increase the minimum working set size, more data will stay loaded in the cache. That means the system will not read the disk so often and the system will run faster.

However, if you don’t know about all this, the main feature of CacheSet you can always use is to clear the cache. Just press Win + R, type cacheset.exe and press Enter, then click the Clear button. That’s it!

You don't need expensive tools to optimize your Windows PC

There are many system optimization tools out there and they are very good, but SysInternals Suite is free, and, as you see, it comes with plenty of helpful apps. Most of all, they can also be used in the Windows Recovery mode, because they were designed for troubleshooting the system. They are small, free, and useful, the best possible qualities of software programs.