How to find programs slowing down my computer

programs-slowing-computer

The maximum performance that can be obtained from a computer will always be limited by its hardware, be it Windows 11 or any other operating system. However, there may be slowdowns due to software. There are programs that cause a computer to run slower than it should. So what are the programs that slow down the computer and how can we find them?

Start the computer faster

The first thing that should come to our mind is that slowdowns on the PC will primarily be due to the initial load. That’s why we first need to look at how we can speed up the Windows computer at startup. For this, you need to go to Task Manager.

You can access the task manager from the menu by right-clicking on Start in Windows 11 and from the menu that comes up by right-clicking the taskbar in Windows 10. Then switch to the Startup tab and look for programs that have “Activated” in the Status section. If the startup effect is high, or if it’s a program that doesn’t really work, you can right-click and disable it. Applications such as Steam, Spotify and WhatsApp are unnecessary to open automatically when the PC is turned on.

You can also see and disable unnecessary applications that start automatically when the PC is turned on in the Services program.

Programs that slow down a Windows computer

Now go to the Processes tab. Here you can track the usage amount of CPU, GPU, Memory or Disk parts. This tells us which programs are consuming the most resources. So we can understand which ones cause Windows to slow down.

One of the programs that consumes the most resources and is most common among users is Google Chrome. CPU and RAM memory usage is high and it also uses disk significantly.

But in addition to Google Chrome, there are other programs that tend to slow down Windows computers such as Photoshop, After Effects, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, and others in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. Of course, PC games also consume a lot of resources. Despite its simplicity, Spotify also uses system resources heavily. Apps like Discord dedicated to instant messaging and other forms of communication also tend to slow down the computer.

Skype is a very practical program with which we can make very clear and high quality video calls over the network with the people we want. The problem is, when this program stays in the background all the time, all it does is slow down our system. Also, Skype will open by default when Windows starts, so if we do not remove this feature from within the program, it will always open and we will have to disable it from the taskbar.

If uTorrent or a similar program is installed, we may experience a slowdown in our PC. This type of software is ideal for downloading what we want safely and quickly, but when we are not using it, the best thing to do is to disable the automatic start of this application.

Other programs that we can install on our computer that can slow down its behavior can be those from Adobe, which often consume a lot of resources, Nero, PowerDVD constantly run in the background and weaken the memory. In addition to others such as IObit Driver Booster, Java or MiniTool Partition Wizard, JDownloader, a program dedicated to downloading and depleting the computer’s potential, is also fatal to computer performance.

Some programs that slow down the computer are:

  • Adobe services
  • Apple services
  • OneDrive
  • Dropbox
  • Mega
  • Google Drive
  • JDownloader
  • uTorrent
  • MiniTool Partition Wizard
  • IObit Driver Booster
  • Advanced SystemCare
  • Ccleaner
  • Onyx
  • Skype
  • Steam
  • Origin
  • GOG Galaxy
  • Discord
  • Nero
  • PowerDVD
  • Spotify
  • Java

To fix slowdown problems on Windows 11 and Windows 10 PCs, it is best to check the Processes in Task Manager as we said earlier. Based on this information, we can look for alternatives to programs that cause significant performance losses. Moreover, we can make hardware-level enhancements so that our PC can run them with good performance.

Many of these services, such as Adobe’s, are responsible for checking for updates. We can disable them and manually check for updates. Others like Skype make the app ready to receive calls, but this may not be necessary in our daily life. Likewise, Ccleaner analyzes what it can delete from the computer in the background, but we can run the process ourselves when we see that we need it.