Let's make your company-issued PC the best

Introduction

Recently, I often hear people complaining that their company-issued PCs have poor specs or not enough storage!!

They might be just right for writing basic reports, but they are a bit underwhelming for science students full of curiosity who want to do development, research, gaming, and more...

However, just complaining won't make your PC suddenly evolve.

It is the trainer's job to bring out the maximum potential of their buddy.

So, in this article, I will introduce settings and powerful techniques to unleash the full potential of your Windows PC.

Settings for speeding up performance

Open Settings with < Win + i > and let's speed things up right away!
(If you are using Windows 10, the names and locations might be slightly different. You should be able to find them by typing in the settings search bar.)

Turning off transparency and visual effects

Windows uses a lot of processing power on unnecessary aesthetic details by default. Let's turn off the following items to stop it from wasting resources.

Transparency effects: A mysterious effect that makes windows slightly translucent

It is on by default, so let's turn it off.

Visual effects: Animations for opening/closing windows, etc.

This is also a setting that unnecessarily uses processing power to improve graphics, so let's turn off the ones you don't need.

• Show thumbnails instead of icons

• Smooth edges of screen fonts

• Show window contents while dragging

Reviewing startup and background apps

Have you ever been annoyed when apps launch automatically when you start your PC? Like OneDrive. It's bothersome, right? It also uses unnecessary power, so I recommend turning off anything you don't need.offI recommend setting it to.

Basically, it's fine to turn off everything except Windows Defender and OS-related items, but if you're really not sure, leave them on.(You can usually find out by looking them up)

Next, turn off any unnecessary apps that run in the background.

Now, those pesky intruders won't start running in the background on their own. Yay!

Disabling SuperFetch / SysMain

SuperFetch or SysMain is a feature that supposedly improves application launch speeds by allocating free memory to cache.

On models with low memory, like company-issued PCs, it often uses resources for its calculations, which can have the opposite effect.

Press < Win + r > to bring up the Run box, then enter the following to open 'Services'.

services.msc

Find SuperFetch or SysMain and disable it.

Make right-click like it was in Windows 10 (Windows 11)

With the arrival of Windows 11, many people likely feel that the right-click menu has changed and become inconvenient. I am one of them. I almost screamed when I first updated because I could no longer select items with keys (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

You can press 'Show more options' or hold Shift while clicking to bring up the old menu, but... doing that every time is a hassle. We didn't have to do this in the past.

Surprisingly, there is a way to revert this. Just run the following command in the Terminal (Admin) and restart.

Change to Windows 10 style

reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve

You can revert this setting to the default with the following command.

Revert to Windows 11 default

reg.exe delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}" /f

Speeding up Chromium-based browsers with flags

Chrome has experimental options known as 'flags' that allow you to experience settings scheduled for future official implementation.

Enter the following into your browser's address bar.
If you are using Edge, Vivaldi, Arc, etc., you should be able to open it by changing the 'chrome' part to the browser name.

chrome://flags/

By turning on the following items, you can speed up your browser, albeit slightly.

• Parallel downloading: Parallel downloading
  

• Smooth Scrolling: Make scrolling smoother
  

• Experimental QUIC protocol: Speed up communication
  

• Zero-copy rasterizer: Optimize memory read/write
  (This might not have much effect on company-issued devices)

There are endless flags to discover if you look them up, so please check them out if you're interested. If you have an Android OS device, I also recommend it because there are plenty of speed-up settings for smartphones.

As a side note, browsers consume a lot of memory, so turning on Memory Saver is recommended.

(For Arc, you can adjust these settings at arc://settings/)

If you tend to open too many tabs, OneTab use this extension.
By clicking the icon or using a set shortcut, you can save links to all open pages at once and close the tabs. It is a god-tier extension that can significantly reduce memory usage.

If you don't use browser-based Gmail or Calendar notifications, turning off "Continue running background apps when the browser is closed" will also reduce memory usage.

Storage Cleanup

Restart

I think quite a few people leave their computers in sleep mode and basically keep them on all the time. If you keep using it without turning the power off, various things accumulate, which can pressure your storage or cause the system to slow down.

This is a well-known method, but restarting is effective because it allows you to reset unnecessary items that have accumulated. Make sure to restart periodically.

C Drive Cleanup

This is also well-known, but I will introduce it just in case.

For Windows 11

Go to Settings < Win + i > > System > Storage > Temporary files and delete the files. At this time, if there are necessary files in Downloads or the Recycle Bin, please make sure to uncheck them.

For Windows 10

From the PC tab in File Explorer < Win + e >, right-click the C drive > press Properties, and you should see the Disk Cleanup item. Don't forget the system files as well.

Deleting temp files

On Windows, applications create temporary folders when in use or during updates, and these sometimes accumulate without being deleted after the work is finished. Here, we will delete these temporary files. (For some reason, there are quite a few folders that aren't deleted by cleanup. It's a mystery.)

It is recommended to empty your Recycle Bin before performing this operation to make it easier.

01. Press < Win + r >, type "temp", and run it.

temp

02. Confirm that the opened folder is C:\Windows\Temp and delete everything < Ctrl + a > -> Delete.

You may see a message about administrator permissions, but it is okay to proceed. If a message like the one below appears, it means the file is necessary, so check "Do this for all current items" and skip it.

A large number of files should have been sent to the Recycle Bin, so don't forget to empty that as well.

03. There is another similar folder, so press < Win + r >, type "%temp%", and follow the same steps to delete the files.

%temp%

Deleting restore points

01. Press < Win + e > to open File Explorer, select the C drive, and open Disk Cleanup.

Go to "Clean up system files" and then to the "More options" tab. By cleaning up "System Restore and Shadow Copies," you can delete unnecessary restore points except for the most recent one. Depending on the person, this can free up a significant amount of space.

For Windows 10 users, if you can't find it, try typing "restore point" into the search box that appears when you press the Windows key.

If you are a challenger who thinks you don't need the restore function, you might want to delete all restore points and configure it so they aren't created (at your own risk. Make sure to save necessary files to the cloud regularly).

Make sure to clean up your Recycle Bin and Downloads folder regularly, haha.

If you are using Ubuntu or Docker, look up how to clean them up. This will free up the most space. Probably ().

Also, clearing your browser history is effective. Opening it with < Ctrl + h > and deleting everything from "all time" can often free up quite a bit of space.

If you still don't have enough space, consider resetting it. You can clear out unnecessary apps and gain about 100GB of storage ( ﾉ ﾟワ ﾟ)ﾉ
Don't forget to save notes like your passwords.

As a note of caution, you might lose the ability to use printers that require your student ID... I'm currently looking into it, but I haven't found a solution yet ; ; If anyone with expertise knows how, please let me know 🙏

Streamlining operations

From here on, I will introduce useful techniques that help speed up your work.

Taskbar

I often look at other people's screens and think, 'Isn't your taskbar messy?' I wonder if they use things like the Microsoft Store or Teams every day. I can't understand it.

You can switch between apps on the taskbar using < Win + number key >. If you rearrange the five apps you use most often, you can switch between them quickly. Make sure to unpin the ones you don't need ^^

Honestly, you don't need the search box or Task View either. You can open search with < Win + q > and Task View with < Win + Tab >. The search box, in particular, takes up space and looks tacky, so Istrongly recommend
hiding it or setting it to icon-only mode (you can edit this by right-clicking the taskbar -> Taskbar settings).

Creating your own custom commands

By applying the ultimate shortcut key < Win + r >, you can use pseudo-commands from anywhere to open files, apps, or run scripts. This is convenient.

01. Create a 'commands' folder in any location. (The name can be anything.)

02. Add the path (address) of the folder you just created to your environment variables.

03. Place shortcuts in the 'commands' folder you created and rename them.

Now, entering the shortcut name from < Win + r > should execute it.
(For example, in my case, < Win + r -> a > opens Arc, and < Win + r -> cy > opens the Cygwin terminal.)

Conclusion

Thank you to everyone who has read this far. I hope this has been at least a little helpful to you all. I think I wrote a bit too much, sorry... The end was a little sloppy, haha. I actually wanted to talk about some deeper, more advanced settings like "Vim is great!" or "with ahk...", but I'll leave it at this for now. If there's another opportunity, I will. If you ask me directly, I'll teach you everything I know. If you have other tips or if something here is wrong, please, by all means, leave a comment!!