Everyone wants a bit more performance from their system, and there are a number of zero cost things you can do to make sure that your system is running to the best of its capabilities, most of these a beginning user can do and shouldn’t be to taxing in terms of the time they will take.
Here are 10 ways to wring a bit more performance out of a slow or ageing PC.
1) Make sure that your drivers and version of windows are up to date.
As an operating system Windows is constantly evolving and developing with small improvements and refinements being made all the time. As such if you are having issues with your system slowing down then it could be that Microsoft has already solved the problem for you.

1. To check for updates: Select the Start button, then select Settings > Windows Update > Check for updates.
2. If there are any updates available you will see an option that says, “Updates are available,” once they are downloaded, select Install now.
   You will then need to reboot your system after the installation of the updates, if there are any, and your system should be running faster.
   Also under the heading of updates are Drivers. Drivers are small programs that work with components of the computer, like a sound card or graphics card, that tell the driver how to interface with the system and vice versa.
3. To check for driver updates: Select the Start button, then select Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options > Optional updates.
4. If additional updates are available, select them and then select Download & install.
5. Restart your PC and see if it seems to run better.
   2) Pause OneDrive syncing
   OneDrive is, depending on who you ask, either a resource hog or a very useful utility for working with teams or across multiple devices. One drive is a Cloud storage solution from Microsoft that allocates you a certain amount of storage space and allows you to access your files from any computer that has access to the internet. The problem is that in order to make sure your system always has the most up-to-date version of your files it has to constantly be uploading information from your system to the server.
   The upshot of all this is that OneDrive can cause system to run slowly.
   To pause syncing to OneDrive
6. On the taskbar, look for OneDrive near the notification area.
7. Select OneDrive > Help & Settings > Pause syncing, and then choose how long you want to pause syncing your files.
8. Restart your PC and see if your performance issues have improved with syncing paused.
9. To resume syncing your files, select OneDrive > Help & Settings > Resume syncing.

3) Use ReadyBoost to help improve your computers performance
ReadyBoost is pretty useful little utility that allows you to use a USB memory stick like an extension of your systems RAM, without having to break out the screw driver and actually physically slotting a extra stick of RAM into your machine.
RAM is one of the main components that make up what is commonly referred to as the ‘power’ of the system.
It should be noted here that ReadyBoost does not actualy improve the speed of your Processors or the throughput of your RAM, it enhances the hard disk access times for small packets of data. ReadyBoost is most useful when it comes to using disk-intensive applications like Adobe Photoshop.
To use ReadyBoost

1. Insert the USB flash drive into a USB port on your PC.
2. Select File Explorer from the taskbar.
3. Press and hold (or right-click) the USB flash drive (or SD card if you used one instead), then select Properties.
4. Select the ReadyBoost tab, then select Use this device.
   Windows determines if the device can use ReadyBoost. If it can’t, it’ll let you know.
5. After Windows determines how much free space to use to optimize memory, select OK to reserve this space so ReadyBoost can use it.

When you look at the contents of the USB flash drive in File Explorer, you’ll see a file named ReadyBoost.sfcache on the flash drive. This file shows how much space is reserved for ReadyBoost.
4) Check for malware
Malicious software, or malware are programs that have been specifically written to harm and hinder your computer. Be that as a form of digital vandalism or for more nefarious purposes such as harvesting your credit card or other personal information.
There are literally millions of individual pieces of malware, one thing that they all have in common is that they all use resources and therefore slow your system down. Other symptoms that you might have a virus or a piece of Malware on your system are odd pop-ups, unexpected error messages, excessive disk usage (what we call hard drive thrashing).
You don’t need an expensive third party anti-malware program, windows has a perfectly adequate suite of software under Windows Security (it used to be called Windows defender Security Center)

1. Select Start > Settings > Privacy & security > Windows Security , and then select Open Windows Security.
2. Select Virus & threat protection, then select Protection updates under Virus & threat protection updates.
3. On the Protection updates screen, select Check for updates to make sure you have the most recent updates.
4. Select Virus & threat protection, then select Quick scan.

Wait for Windows Security to finish scanning for viruses and malware.

5. Do one of the following, depending on the results of the scan:
    Run the recommended advanced scan. This scan takes longer but searches more extensively for threats on your PC.
    If Windows Security finds a virus or malware and can’t remove or quarantine it, contact Microsoft Support for help.
    If no viruses are found, restart your PC and try to reproduce the performance problem you were having with your PC.
   5) Restart your computer and only open the programs you need.
   Finaly, an oldie but a goodie. There is a saying among my fellow technophiles; “When in doubt, power out” In other words sometimes you need to start with a blank slate. Its possible that over long periods of time your system will have fragments of orphaned programs running in the background. This digital junk can impede your systems operation. Thankfully this is the very simplest thing to fix, simply
6. Select the Start button, then select Power > Restart .
7. After your PC restarts, open just the apps you need, then close them when you’re done.