When you have a Windows 11 PC, keeping it in tip-top shape is important. Performance degradation is a real problem as you start to pile more and more data onto the computer, so there are steps you should take to ensure it keeps performing its best.
On the flip side, there are some things you really shouldn't need to be doing in this day and age. A lot of maintenance tasks that used to be prevalent a few years ago have become sort of outdated or can be automated with the right mechanisms, so why should you waste more time and energy than necessary doing them yourself?
Using registry cleaners
They're just not worth it
Back in the day, third-party PC cleaner software seemed like a necessity, and it was thanks to all the extra features they seemed to pack in compared to the built-in solutions in Windows. That included registry cleaners, which removed a lot of unnecessary files. But really, registry cleaners are kind of pointless.
There's no real performance benefit to cleaning your registry. These are absolutely tiny pieces of data that, even if they're unnecessary, won't impact your experience in the slightest. In fact, it can sometimes be more risky to use registry cleaners, as they might inadvertently delete registry keys you still need and end up causing more problems than they solve. It's best just to avoid them altogether.
Your Windows registry doesn't need "cleaning", but you can do these 5 things instead
Here's how to actually speed up your Windows PC.
Running Disk Cleanup
Just let Windows do it
Even if you forgo third-party apps when it comes to cleaning your PC, you might think you still need to run Disk Cleanup every now and then. However, that's also not true. Since Windows 10, there's a feature called Storage Sense that makes things much easier for you.
Storage Sense can be configured in the Settings app, and it will delete temporary and unnecessary files whenever you're running low on storage space. Not only will it delete those temporary files, including files in your Recycle Bin, but you can also set it up to delete local copies of OneDrive files if they haven't been used in a while, and even delete content from the Downloads folder, if you're brave.
You can also change the settings so that Storage Sense runs more frequently, so instead of waiting to be low on disk space, it will act more proactively to keep your PC clean.
Defragmenting (or optimizing) drives
Who uses HDDs anymore?
Another tool I used somewhat frequently back in the day was the Disk Defragmenter in Windows. That may have been partly because I loved the version of it in Windows XP where you could visibly see a representation of your data and how it was being moved around, which was changed in Windows Vista and later versions. But at the time, it was also genuinely useful. File fragmentation meant that files could be scattered throughout a spinning hard drive, and the computer could take noticeably longer to fetch necessary files if they weren't stored sequentially.
With the advent of SSDs, the physical position of files on a drive really doesn't matter anymore, and it doesn't matter whether files are fragmented or not. Microsoft actually changed the built-in tool in Windows so that it doesn't try to defragment SSDs, as that would cause unnecessary wear on the drive without practical benefits, and instead it optimizes the drive by allowing unused space to be cleaned up so that writing files in the future is slightly faster.
But even that isn't something you need to do. Out of the box, Windows 11 is already set up to automatically optimize drives on a regular basis, so even though there is a tool to manually defragment and optimize drives, I never open it anymore.
Remember defragmenting your PC? Here's why you don't need to do it anymore
Defragmenting is a thing of the past
Using third-party driver updaters
They can do more harm than good
Keeping your PC and drivers up to date can be important, and you should do your best to make sure you have the latest and greatest. But some companies try to take advantage of that to sell you their own driver updaters that claim to support virtually every device and always find the latest versions available. That can be enticing if you care about your PC.
But in reality, third-party driver updaters can be a major liability. In some cases, they may pull drivers that haven't been properly tested for your configuration, or in more extreme situations, they might even pull drivers that are for the entirely wrong device, potentially breaking your PC more than if you just left it alone. I remember that happening to me many years ago when a tech support expert told me to install one of these programs, and it kept trying to install a driver for something completely unrelated to the device it was supposed to be updating.
When it comes to most components of your PC, you're actually fine without worrying too much about driver updates, and you can rely on the built-in updater provided by the PC's manufacturer. If you don't have one, the company's support website usually does the trick.
The only exception here would be graphics drivers, but thankfully, companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, all have dedicated software to handle these updates, so you really don't need to rely on third-party solutions that may have other shady tactics on top of being useless.
Please stop using third-party drivers update utilities
Most driver update utilities are just bloatware
Uninstalling programs one by one
Just do it all in one go
When programs start to pile up on your PC over time, another step you may need to take is to remove the ones you don't need anymore. But doing this through the typical Windows interface gets very tedious if you have multiple programs you need to remove, especially since each one has its own prompts, and sometimes they can't run simultaneously.
I solved this with a simple, small program called BCUninstaller, and it's not the first time I've written about it. This program finds every program on your computer, even some that might not appear in your normal programs list, and offers the option to remove them in bulk, even including a quiet uninstall option for supported programs, meaning you may not have to interact with setup windows to confirm removing a given program. Select the programs you want to uninstall, choose the Uninstall quietly option, and you can even move away from your computer to do anything else. BCUninstaller automatically skips programs that may not support quiet uninstalling, so it will do as much as it can on its own and ask for your input at the end when needed.
It really saves a lot of time with maintenance and helps keep my computer running much more smoothly.
Don't waste time on these things
We all want to make sure our PCs perform the best they can for as long as possible, but the tasks above range from a waste of time to a potential safety risk, so I'm glad I stopped doing these things after being misguided for years. You're better off just letting Windows take care of itself for most things, and when you do need third-party programs, being selective and making careful choices is important.