Free/cheap and easy Windows 10 utilities/diagnostics to improve performance

[ObviouslyNotAGolfer]

We have a 5 year-old Asus PC, which has served us quite well. I might upgrade RAM, but I want to see what we can get from some free, cheap, and easy diagnostics, scans, etc. I use the PC mostly for word processing, preparing view graph presentations, spreadsheets, web browsing, and some photo editing in Adobe Lightroom.

Disk defragmentation used to be a thing, but am not sure whether this is handled automatically by the OS at this point. We are not really having big issues/problems at this point, but the system is running slowly at times. I am not too enthused about trying registry cleaners at this point. Any suggestions appreciated!

Thanks!

[Wrenchturner]

As far as I know, fragmentation is still a thing unless you're using a solid state drive, which you probably aren't.  Make sure you restart, and update windows regularly.  You could also use a standby/hibernation feature if you are having slow boot times.  You could also use the task manager to identify what is bottlenecking during slow operation:CPU or RAM, etc.  Could also be malware.
My knowledge is about ten years old though, so I'm sure other posters will have more useful info.

[EricEng]

Disk Defrag is auto in win win7, win8, and win10 so don't worry about it.  99% of the "clean, optimize, speedup" software is bloat, spam, and/or malware.  Best solution is remove strange, unfamiliar products that are installed along with an antivirus solution.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/malicious-software-removal-tool-details.aspx

If it is running slow, open task manager and check your resources.  What is maxing?  CPU or ram?  If CPU, sort processes by usage and see who the culprits are.  If it's not the program you are using, you might need to remove it.  How much ram does your current system have?  Most regular users don't benefit from more than 8-16GB of RAM.

[Khaetra]

My son swears by Windows Defender and I believe it's free.

[EricEng]

My son swears by Windows Defender and I believe it's free.

That is the new built in freebie from Windows I was trying to think of.  It is a solid choice without risk of adware or bloat.

[ObviouslyNotAGolfer]

Thanks for the suggestions. You know, back in the day, I used to hate Macs, but at this point, I think anything would be better than Microsoft... I have been wanting to convert everything over to Linux Mint for ages now. Here is the latest precious thing that happened tonight. (It's always something new and horrible and bizarre from Windows/Microsoft)

Staying up late to get this important PowerPoint done. I click "Save" and get the endless wheel of suffering symbol telling me a process is in process. After getting sick of it, and realizing it has frozen after about five minutes, I go to task manager to end the task. I then find that the file has been converted to a pdf and renamed:

asldijfhp;oasijrqas'dfpjf47d5fsgiw.2as41f3.2asd1f;lksd';fkas'd;flka'sd;fkla's;dlfa's;dfadlforutoetyunb'a3df54s.pdf

It will not open, asking me which "app" I want to use. Trashed my original file, converted it to a pdf, and then asks me which "app" i want to use. Fortunately, I had it backed up elsewhere, but still lost half an hour of work! Thanks Microsoft!!!!!!

[YttriumNitrate]

If it doesn't have one already, a solid state would be the #1 thing to improve apparent performance.

[JLee]

Thanks for the suggestions. You know, back in the day, I used to hate Macs, but at this point, I think anything would be better than Microsoft... I have been wanting to convert everything over to Linux Mint for ages now. Here is the latest precious thing that happened tonight. (It's always something new and horrible and bizarre from Windows/Microsoft)

Staying up late to get this important PowerPoint done. I click "Save" and get the endless wheel of suffering symbol telling me a process is in process. After getting sick of it, and realizing it has frozen after about five minutes, I go to task manager to end the task. I then find that the file has been converted to a pdf and renamed:

asldijfhp;oasijrqas'dfpjf47d5fsgiw.2as41f3.2asd1f;lksd';fkas'd;flka'sd;fkla's;dlfa's;dfadlforutoetyunb'a3df54s.pdf

It will not open, asking me which "app" I want to use. Trashed my original file, converted it to a pdf, and then asks me which "app" i want to use. Fortunately, I had it backed up elsewhere, but still lost half an hour of work! Thanks Microsoft!!!!!!

If there's always something bad happening, your system is either compromised with malware/etc or you're in desperate need of a clean/fresh Windows install.  My Win10 machines have been largely flawless and I have been running Windows 10 since the pre-release days.

[ketchup]

Thanks for the suggestions. You know, back in the day, I used to hate Macs, but at this point, I think anything would be better than Microsoft... I have been wanting to convert everything over to Linux Mint for ages now. Here is the latest precious thing that happened tonight. (It's always something new and horrible and bizarre from Windows/Microsoft)

Staying up late to get this important PowerPoint done. I click "Save" and get the endless wheel of suffering symbol telling me a process is in process. After getting sick of it, and realizing it has frozen after about five minutes, I go to task manager to end the task. I then find that the file has been converted to a pdf and renamed:

asldijfhp;oasijrqas'dfpjf47d5fsgiw.2as41f3.2asd1f;lksd';fkas'd;flka'sd;fkla's;dlfa's;dfadlforutoetyunb'a3df54s.pdf

It will not open, asking me which "app" I want to use. Trashed my original file, converted it to a pdf, and then asks me which "app" i want to use. Fortunately, I had it backed up elsewhere, but still lost half an hour of work! Thanks Microsoft!!!!!!

If there's always something bad happening, your system is either compromised with malware/etc or you're in desperate need of a clean/fresh Windows install.  My Win10 machines have been largely flawless and I have been running Windows 10 since the pre-release days.

This seems like the real answer here.  A five year old PC should be humming along just fine for your use case.  RAM upgrade (how much is in there now?) or maybe an SSD could make a difference, but I'd definitely wipe and reinstall Windows first.

[JLee]

Definitely switch to an SSD for your boot/system drive at the very least. It's the single biggest thing you can do to improve any machine that's still running on spinning disk.

[ketchup]

Definitely switch to an SSD for your boot/system drive at the very least. It's the single biggest thing you can do to improve any machine that's still running on spinning disk.

I'd still place a RAM upgrade above it if the system is running on 2GB (not likely, but possible at 2014 age).
I'd rank it (for general generic office use):
2GB / spinning rust
4GB / spinning rust
4GB / SSD
8GB / SSD

[JLee]

Definitely switch to an SSD for your boot/system drive at the very least. It's the single biggest thing you can do to improve any machine that's still running on spinning disk.

I'd still place a RAM upgrade above it if the system is running on 2GB (not likely, but possible at 2014 age).
I'd rank it (for general generic office use):
2GB / spinning rust
4GB / spinning rust
4GB / SSD
8GB / SSD

Dear lord, I had not considered that to be a possibility..I've had 16GB (or more) since 2012 or 2013.  x.x

[ketchup]

Definitely switch to an SSD for your boot/system drive at the very least. It's the single biggest thing you can do to improve any machine that's still running on spinning disk.

I'd still place a RAM upgrade above it if the system is running on 2GB (not likely, but possible at 2014 age).
I'd rank it (for general generic office use):
2GB / spinning rust
4GB / spinning rust
4GB / SSD
8GB / SSD

Dear lord, I had not considered that to be a possibility..I've had 16GB (or more) since 2012 or 2013.  x.x

I'm not proud of it but my company bought a bunch of 2GB Win7 machines around 2013...  I quietly upgraded most of them to 4GB about a year later once I had a little more authority on the matter.

Currently my standard deployment for a plain-jane office PC without any special requirements (mostly for the ongoing upgrade from Win7 to Win10) is current-gen i5/8GB RAM/250GB SSD.  I certainly wouldn't recommend any less than that for a new system.

At home... same boat as you; I haven't had less than 16GB in any primary system since late 2011.

[EricEng]

Staying up late to get this important PowerPoint done. I click "Save" and get the endless wheel of suffering symbol telling me a process is in process. After getting sick of it, and realizing it has frozen after about five minutes, I go to task manager to end the task. I then find that the file has been converted to a pdf and renamed:

asldijfhp;oasijrqas'dfpjf47d5fsgiw.2as41f3.2asd1f;lksd';fkas'd;flka'sd;fkla's;dlfa's;dfadlforutoetyunb'a3df54s.pdf

It will not open, asking me which "app" I want to use. Trashed my original file, converted it to a pdf, and then asks me which "app" i want to use. Fortunately, I had it backed up elsewhere, but still lost half an hour of work! Thanks Microsoft!!!!!!

Most likely it opened a "Save As" prompt window off screen or stuck behind something.  Then you kept hitting the keyboard inputing the file name and likely changing the format.  Modern office versions are good about saving temp files if the program crashes while it was open editing something.  If you reopen word it sometimes prompts about restoring or you can open a previous file.