Home How To Guide 10 Tips to Free Up RAM on Your Windows 10 Computer (Updated)

10 Tips to Free Up RAM on Your Windows 10 Computer (Updated)

To free up RAM on Windows 10, you can try closing unnecessary programs and background processes, disabling startup programs, clearing up disk space, and using the built-in Task Manager to monitor and manage your system's memory usage.

Steve Ballmer

June 24, 2024

There is nothing more annoying than a slow computer and the main reason behind this problem is having a high CPU and memory usage. In simple words, your Windows 10 apps are using too many system resources Or sometimes your Laptop becomes slow due to memory leaks or power surges. In such cases, free up RAM on Windows 10 will make everything work properly. That means If you want the best performance from your computer, then make sure that your memory usage is optimized. Here we have listed some of the tips to Free up and optimize RAM usage on Windows 10 PCs.

Memory is required by the processor to manage the data of running programs and services or processes.

Contents

1 What is RAM?
2 How Free up ram on windows 10

What is RAM?

RAM stands for Random Access Memory also known as the primary memory of the computer that holds programs currently running on your computer. That means the more RAM that’s in your computer, the more programs you can run at once without negatively affecting performance. When Windows run more programs that your RAM is unable to handle it uses a part of the hard drive called the page file that acts as “Virtual Memory” and moves some programs there. But this is much slower than actual RAM, which is why you notice Windows 10 slow performance issues.

Note: RAM is volatile memory, you’ll lose its contents when your computer shuts off.

How Free up ram on windows 10

If you are struggling with Windows 10 slow performance, High CPU, or 100% memory usage free up memory on your computer following the steps below that probably helps optimize the performance.

Restart Your PC

As discussed before RAM is volatile, you’ll lose its contents when your computer shuts off. And Restarting your PC will also clear memory and reset all running programs. While this obviously won’t increase your total RAM, it will clean up processes running in the background that could be eating up RAM.

Check what causing RAM Usage

Let’s see what programs eating system resources, that cause low memory or 100% memory usage on your computer.

Open the task manager by searching for it on the start menu,
Also, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + shift + Esc to open Task Manager,
Click More Details to expand to the full utility if needed.
Under the Processes tab, click the Memory header to sort from most to least RAM usage.
Keep the apps you see here in mind, as we’ll discuss more on them later.

For more information, switch to the Performance tab. In the Memory section, you’ll see a chart of your RAM usage over time. Click Open Resource Monitor at the bottom and you can get more information.

Uninstall bloatware

Now you have an idea of what apps use more RAM on your PC, Do you really need these apps, if your answer is no we recommend uninstall them as they just wasting resources on your computer.

Open settings using keyboard shortcut Windows + I,
Click Apps then Apps and Features,
Now click Uninstall on any app you want to remove.

Scan for Virus and Malware

Again Sometimes viruses or malware infections can slow down your computer, Or you have installed pirated software that running background and steals your system resources like memory. You must regularly check your computer for viruses or malware with an updated antivirus or antimalware.

Disable unnecessary startup programs

Let’s disable unnecessary startup programs that launch every time your computer starts and contribute to chewing away at your available RAM.

First open Task Manager on your computer.
After that, click on the Startup tab.
You can sort the list according to the Startup impact.
Right-click on the applications that you don’t want to run at startup and select “Disable”.

Stop apps running background

On Windows 10 number of apps run in the background to take advantage of additional features, such as the ability to download data, update Live Tiles, and show notifications. But apps running in the background (even when you didn’t start them) can drain the battery, waste bandwidth and system resources include memory. And you can save lots of memory usage by preventing apps from running in the background.

Open Settings then Click on Privacy.
Click on Background apps, Here Under the “Choose which apps can run in the background” section, turn off the toggle switch for the apps you want to restrict.
Alternatively, under the “Background Apps” section, you can turn off the Let apps in the background toggle switch to prevent an app from running in the background toggle switch.

Remove Browser Extensions

We install browser extensions to use additional features it provides. But a lot of times, these extensions are also the origin of malware and threats for your PC and you may notice Google Chrome Using So Much RAM.

And Removing these extensions can free up RAM on your PC. Always install the extensions you’re pretty sure of, otherwise, you can take the help of Advanced System Protector to protect your Windows PC against malware threats.

Turn off visual effects

Windows 10 comes with a lot of busy visual effects for windows, menus, tooltips, and more. If you have plenty of RAM, these visual effects aren’t an issue. But, if you have very little RAM installed in your PC, then these effects will affect Windows 10 performance as they will eat up a lot of available memory. And disabling these effects can significantly increase available memory.

Use the keyboard shortcut Windows + E to Open File Explorer on your PC.
After that, right-click on “This PC”, and select Properties.
Tab on the Advanced System Settings.
Click on the setting option available in the Performance section.
Lastly, just click on the “Adjust for the best performance”.
All the animated visual effects will be disabled with this setting. If you want to customize this setting, then you can select Custom. After that, you can select any of the visual effects you like.

Adjust Virtual Memory

As we discussed before the paging file uses hard disk space and works as virtual memory and you can increase this and hopefully keep performance stable.

Search for the Control Panel on the Start Menu to open it.
Switch the Category view in the top-right to Small icons (if needed) and choose System.
On the left side, click Advanced System Settings, which will open a new window.
Here, on the Advanced tab, click Settings under Performance.
Switch to the Advanced tab once again and click the Change button.

Now you’ll see the paging file size for your main drive. In most cases, you can leave the Automatically manage box checked and let Windows take care of it. But you can uncheck this and set the Initial size and Maximum size to higher values.

Install More RAM

If you’re really low on RAM or want to run more programs at once, there’s really no way around it: you need to add some more RAM to your machine. While it’s not cheap, adding RAM will grant much-improved performance if your computer hasn’t had much until now. On a desktop, this is a pretty simple upgrade. But due to the confined space on a laptop, it may be difficult or even impossible. You’ll also need to make sure you buy RAM that’s compatible with your system and we recommend take advice from experts.