Windows 11 Maintenance

What NOT to do

• Do not defragment your drive! Most drives nowadays are SSDs and "defragging" is a thing of the olden days when everyone used HDDs. SSDs will automatically re-trim themselves.
• Do not run any "cleaning" application! There are a few that are actually good (BleachBit), but most of them are rubbish and lie to you, and delete things that should not be deleted. This includes applications like CCleaner or any cleaning/tune up programs. If it costs money, do NOT use it.

Updating

Before doing anything else, you should update everything on your system. This includes running Windows Update, updating your drivers.

• Run Windows Update
• Run Optional Windows Update
• Update GPU drivers
• Update applications (winget upgrade)

Removing temporary files

• Run Disk Cleanup (cleanmgr.exe) and click "Clean up system files". You should click all checkboxes and run it.
• Note: This will remove your recycle bin contents.
• Note 2: Run this on every drive you have.

Disable startup applications

• Run Task Manager and disable startup apps as needed.
• If a process has a generic name like Update.exe, right click the column header and tick the "Command line" option. That will point at what application and folder it actually is.
• Run regedit and go to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and delete any registry keys that you do not want.
• Also go to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
• Run shell:startup and delete any startup shortcut commands as needed.
• Run shell:common startup and delete any startup shortcut commands as needed.
• Open Task Scheduler and see if any apps start up from there. I would recommend disabling, not deleting the entries.

Applications

• Look over your installed applications and uninstall the ones you do not use.
• Go look in the Apps in System Settings and Uninstall a Program in the Control Panel.
• Also look at Game launchers like Steam and remove games you haven't touched in years.
• Run a tool like WizTree or WinDirStat and find any large files that you can delete to relieve some space.