Over time all PCs will run slower eventually. But it’s still hard to accept it when that happens to your Microsoft Surface laptop.
You loved the feeling when you got the brand new Surface Pro for the first time – everything seemed blazingly fast. But the reality is: as time goes by, it starts to run sluggishly, freezes now and then, run slowly to start-up or shut down.
What went wrong? You might blame Windows 10 for accumulating system junks and having frequent system updates which are often quite time-consuming.
However, those can be just some of the reasons out here that lead to a slow Surface Pro. Plus, Microsoft has been upgrading Windows operating system to deliver better performance. The latest Windows 10 is a good example.
In this article, we’re going to share several useful tips that hopefully can help make your Surface Pro faster.
Pro tip: if you are using a brand new Surface Pro and it runs extremely slow, you’d better contact Microsoft support to see if you can get a replacement. Their support team is excellent, and we highly encourage you to do so.
Contents
1. Check Spyware/Malware
Chances are third-party malware, virus, or spyware may have caught you. They usually do a number of bad things such as damaged files, taking over web browsers, eating up precious disk space, etc. which will slow down your Surface Pro for sure.
How to know? The easiest way to find out is to use antivirus or anti-malware to scan your Surface Pro system. We recommend BitDefender Antivirus Plus for this purpose. It’s rated as one of the best security software.
2. Manage Startup Programs
Many programs you’ve installed are notorious for secretly adding themselves to the auto-startup list (thanks to those “unethical” developers).
Not only will that affect boot time, but you’ll experience more slowdowns or freezing times after the startup. Because these programs can be still running and consuming a considerable amount of system resources.
Don’t hesitate to disable or remove them once for all. On Windows 10, you can use Task Manager to manage those programs or services. Just right-click on the taskbar (at the bottom), select Task Manager, go to the “Startup” tab, where you can disable any programs you want. Learn more here.
3. Clean up Hard Drive to Regain More Free Space
Although there is no science-backed finding, it’s a best practice that you should have at least 15 percent of free disk space to make a PC run smoothly. That means if your Surface Pro laptop is 85 percent full for more, it’s time to clean up and make some room for it.
You can do so manually, by uninstalling unused programs, transferring large files, clearing system registry/junks, etc.
We recommend a faster yet more efficient way, by using a utility called — CleanMyPC, which does a number of clean-ups automatically so you can free up tons of space in the shortest amount of time.
4. Lighten Web Browsers While Surfing The Internet
These days many software companies develop plugins/extensions for web browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, etc.) to make their products easier to access. For example, Pinterest and Pockets have their own extensions available for major web browsers.
If you are an Internet junkie, chances are you have installed quite a few add-ons that you like, which no doubt will result in a sluggish Surface Pro.
How to fix that? Go to the Settings or Add-on Manager of your browsers, remove those extensions you don’t need.
Meanwhile, some web pages you visit may contain Adware, with flash ads and content auto-loading, consuming lots of CPU and memory thus lagging the whole system. We recommend using a light-weighted plugin like Adblock.
5. Upgrade To An SSD For Real Speed
You should have heard about SSDs (solid-state drives), right? They are superior to traditional HDDs (hard disk drives) over many factors from performance to reliability. We have covered this in this SSD article.
The only downside is that SSD costs more than an HDD, but price difference has been dropping steadily as SSDs are becoming the mainstream.
The point here is: if your Surface Pro is old and all the above efforts didn’t bring much speed, consider replacing the internal HDD with an SSD. Learn more from this PCAdvisor tutorial.
These are our five simple tips to tune up a Surface Pro laptop. Do you find them helpful? What other tips do you have to fix the slow issues? Feel free to leave a comment and let us know.
