The lion's share of the global desktop OS pie goes to Microsoft, with nearly 70% of users using nothing but Windows. We've seen Linux adoption rates going up over the past few years, but that's a story for another day. In the meantime, Windows users like myself remain stuck with the ups and downs of Windows 11 usage.

At its core, Windows 11 is certainly easy to use, but it's also incredibly heavy. In fact, Microsoft's OS has a weird habit of feeling heavy and lumbering regardless of the device you're using – whether it's a fully-powered desktop rig or a five-year-old laptop. Of course, it's the OS that slows things down, thanks to plenty of defaults it comes with that you might never use, but certainly feel when they hold your devices back.

Windows 11's system defaults love holding back your PC

There's so much the OS crams down your PC's throat

There's nothing quite as refreshing for a PC as a fresh Windows installation. It's usually the nuke option once things get too messy or something goes awfully wrong, and once a reinstallation is over, we're always happy to see a fresh new Windows desktop. The one thing most users don't truly realize, however, is that even in its freshest, newest avatar, Windows comes loaded with an insane amount of system defaults and services that don't serve any real purpose except slowing down your PC more than it needs to be.

Whether it's by running tens of different startup apps, loading up Copilot, committing a chunk of your memory with preloaded apps with SysMain, or by keeping Indexed search on to hammer your drive, Windows absolutely loves clogging things up, and it hates giving you the reins to your own OS.

System startup apps are a huge defaulter

Startup times and efficiency both take a turn for the worse

There aren't a lot of apps that truly need to start up the moment you get to your desktop, but Windows does have a habit of waking up as many as it can. Sure, a few apps like Wallpaper Engine or TranslucentTB make sense, but heavy apps like MS Teams and Copilot make zero sense. They can always be initialized later, but the first thing they do is increase your startup times. Taking control of your Windows startup apps is the first thing you should do on every fresh install, making sure that only the most important processes turn on alongside Windows.

Don't ignore the Task Scheduler, either. Windows loves giving you the illusion that you're in control of all your startup processes once you open the Task Manager's Startup Apps, but the Task Scheduler is hiding more background processes that turn on immediately after startup. This is where your software updaters and telemetry services lurk, and they continue running in the background, starting up with Windows, even if you think you've taken care of all startup apps and services from the Task Manager.

SysMain is a relic that you don't need anymore

In the era of SSDs, it's more irrelevant than ever

A Vista-era antiquity, SuperFetch tries to make your PC appear "fast" by preloading apps into the system memory, but in the era of SSDs, it serves absolutely zero purpose. Not only does it keep a chunk of your memory committed to preloaded apps, but it also assumes that you're going to use them. It sounds like a smart idea on paper, sure, but this thing ends up doing more harm than good. It constantly fills up your RAM instead of letting your system respond naturally to what you're actually using. On older hard drives, this translates to constant disk activity and sluggish responsiveness. On SSDs and NVMe drives, SysMain just causes pointless background churn, adding nothing meaningful to your experience.

The real problem is that Windows treats this behavior as essential, when it simply isn't anymore. Modern storage is already fast enough, and RAM is better utilized dynamically rather than being pre-allocated based on guesswork. Disabling SysMain doesn't harm your PC, either; it'll just make it more consistent.

Copilot and AI services add a constant layer of overhead

Always-on intelligence that you didn't explicitly ask for

Microsoft is all-in on AI, and Windows 11 makes that very clear. Copilot isn't a feature you click on when needed, either. Microsoft has baked it into the system, tied it into search, and made it quietly present in the background. Even if you never actively use it, parts of its infrastructure are still loaded, reserving memory and occasionally spinning up processes that contribute absolutely nothing to your day-to-day workflow.

The bigger issue here is that it isn't positioned as optional, either. AI services in Windows 11 feel more like a baseline expectation than an add-on, and that comes at a cost. You'd be effectively running an extra layer of functionality at all times, whether you benefit from it or not. On paper, it's "the future," but in practice, it's just more overhead on a system that already has enough going on.

Search indexing works overtime for results you barely need

Fast search shouldn't come at the cost of system performance

Windows Search indexing is meant to make finding files instant, but it often ends up doing far more work than necessary. The indexer constantly scans, updates, and re-evaluates your files in the background, especially after updates or when large chunks of data change. That means random spikes in CPU and disk usage that can make your system feel busy even when you’re doing nothing at all.

There's a bit of irony here, which is that most users don't even rely on Windows Search heavily enough to justify this behavior. It's far quicker to manually navigate folders than to depend on search results, and if you do want to, there are always other tools like VoidTools' Everything or Listary. And yet, Windows insists on keeping the index fresh at all times, prioritizing theoretical speed over practical efficiency, and the price for that is paid by your system.

Windows 11 does not need to be this heavy

None of these default problems make Windows 11 "unusable," but they do make it unnecessarily bloated. The frustrating part here is that most of these aren't bugs or edge cases, either. They're proper, deliberate defaults that prioritize features over efficiency. Left untouched, they quietly eat into your system's responsiveness, turning even powerful hardware into something that feels just a bit slower than it should.

The fix, too, isn't all that drastic either. It's just about taking back control by trimming startup apps, dialing back background services, and questioning what actually needs to run. Windows 11 works best when you stop letting it do everything it wants to do.