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Optimizing Performance

Optimizing Windows 10 is complete without a few tips and techniques for boosting overall performance-and that's exactly what you'll find in this tutorial. As you set out to use these tips and techniques, remember that your computer's performance is in your control. You'll need to fine-tune settings occasionally to keep things running smoothly. You'll need to perform maintenance as necessary. And you'll need to operate your computer while keeping in mind its relative performance ratings.

Optimizing Power Management Settings for Performance

Regardless of what type of device you have, don't overlook the impact of power settings on your computer's performance. Power management settings are designed to save energy, but there is a direct tradeoff between power savings and performance. The basic options for turning off the screen and entering sleep mode in Configuring When the Screen Turns Off. Now let's look at how can use power plans and optimize advanced power settings for the way you work.

Selecting and Using Power Plans

You use the Power Options page in Control Panel to manage your computer's power plans. Power plans are collections of power management settings that control power usage and consumption. A computer can have multiple power plans, but only one can be active at any particular time.

Note: You need administrative privileges to manage power plans and other advanced power options. Because of this, you may find the related settings are dimmed and cannot be set unless you click the Change Settings That Are Currently Unavailable link.

Open the Power Options page by typing Power Options in the Search box, and then pressing Enter. Specify the power plan to use by click it in the Preferred Plans list. Most computers have two or three default power plans:

  • Balanced: Balances energy usage and system performance. The processor speeds up when more resources are used and slows down when less are needed.
  • High Performance: Optimizes the computer for performance while increasing energy usage. The plan ensures that you always have enough power for using graphics-intensive programs or playing multimedia games.
  • Power Saver: Reduces power consumption while decreasing performance. The plan slows down the processor to conserve power.

Power plans have basic and advanced settings. Basic settings control when a computer turns off its display and when it enters sleep mode. And if you are using a device with a battery, you'll have separate plugged in and on battery options. Advanced settings determine precisely whether and when power management components are shut down and how those components are configured for performance. And you'll like wise have different advanced options for when the computer is plugged in and on battery.

The available advanced settings depend on the type of computer you are using and include:

  • Battery\Reserve Battery Level: Determines the percentage of battery remaining that initiates reserve power mode. Typical default is 7 percent, meaning enter reserve power mode when battery power reaches 7 percent remaining. A reserve level of 5 to 18 percent is often best.
  • Desktop Background Settings\Slide Show: Determines whether the slide show feature for the desktop background is available or paused. Default is Available. Set to Paused to disable background slide shows on the desktop.
  • Display\Turn Off Display After: Determines whether and when a computer's display is turned off to conserve power. Choosing Never disables this feature. Specific value in minutes sets inactive duration before the display is turned off.
  • Hard Disk\Turn Off Hard Disk After: Determines whether and when a computer's hard disk is turned off to conserve power. Choosing Never (0) disables turning off the hard disk. Specific value in minutes sets inactive duration before hard disk is turned off.
  • Multimedia Settings\When Playing Video: Determines the power optimization mode used when playing video. Use Optimize Video Quality for best quality playback. Use Balanced for a balanced approach to adjusting playback quality to save power. Use Optimize Power Savings for active approach to adjusting playback quality to save power.
  • Multimedia Settings\When Sharing Media: Determines what the computer does when a device or another computer plays media from the computer. Use Allow The Computer To Enter Away Mode to ensure computer will not enter sleep mode when sharing media. Use Allow The Computer To Sleep to allow the computer to enter sleep mode when inactive. Use Prevent Idling To Sleep to allow the computer to enter sleep mode only if set by user.
  • PCI Express\Link State Power Management Determines: the power saving mode to use with Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express devices connected to the computer. Set this option to Off, Moderate Power Savings, or Maximum Power Savings.
  • Power Buttons And Lid\Power Button Action: Specifies the action to take when someone pushes and holds the computer's power button. Set this option to Do Nothing, Sleep, Hibernate, or Shutdown.
  • Power Buttons And Lid\Sleep Button Action: Sets the default action for the sleep button. Use this setting to override the computer's default action. Set this option to Do Nothing, Sleep, or Hibernate (as permitted).
  • Processor Power Management\Maximum Processor State: Sets a maximum or peak performance state for the computer's processor. Lower to save power at a direct cost to responsiveness and computational speed. At 50 percent or below can cause a significant reduction in performance and responsiveness.
  • Processor Power Management\Minimum Processor State: Sets a minimum performance state for the computer's processor. Lower to save power at a direct cost to responsiveness and computational speed. 5 percent reduces responsiveness while offering substantial power savings. 50 percent helps to balance responsiveness and while moderately saving power. 100 percent maximize responsiveness but doesn't saving power.
  • Processor Power Management\System Cooling Policy: Determines whether the operating system increases the fan speed before slowing the processor. Passive limitedly enables, and the processor may run hot. Active fully enables to help cool the processor.
  • PlanName\Require A Password On Wakeup: Determines whether a password is required when a computer wakes from sleep. Set to Yes or No. With domain computers, controlled through Group Policy.
  • Sleep\Allow Hybrid Sleep: Specifies whether the computer uses hybrid sleep mode rather than the sleep mode used in earlier versions of Windows. Set to On or Off. Hybrid sleep mode puts the computer in a low-power state until the user resumes using the computer. If the battery runs low, the computer hibernates.
  • Sleep\Allow Wake Timers: Determines whether timed events should be allowed to wake the computer from a sleep state. Use Disable to prevent. Use Enable to allow.
  • Sleep\Hibernate After: Determines whether and when a computer hibernates to conserve power. Not normally used unless battery power runs low. Use Never to disable. Specific value in minutes sets inactive duration before the computer hibernates.
  • Sleep\Sleep After: Determines whether and when a computer enters a sleep state to conserve power. Use Never to disable. Specific value in minutes sets inactive duration before the computer sleeps.
  • USB Settings\USB Selective Suspend Setting: Determines whether the USB selective suspend feature is available. Use Disabled to turn off selective suspend. Use Enabled to allow selective suspend.
  • Wireless Adapter Settings\Power Saving Mode: Specifies the power saving mode to use with any wireless adapters connected to the computer. Set to Maximum Performance, Low Power Saving, Medium Power Saving, or Maximum Power Saving.
Differences in the advanced settings are what set the default power plans apart. As an example, the High Performance plan ensures performance by allowing the computer's processor to always run at 100 percent power consumption, whereas the Power Saver and the Balanced plans reduce energy consumption by configuring the processor to use a minimum power consumption rate of 5 percent and a maximum rate of 100 percent.

You can manage power plans from the command line by using the Power Configuration (Powercfg.exe) utility. Type powercfg -l at the command prompt to list the power plans configured on a computer by name and globally unique identifier (GUID). When you know the GUID for a power plan, you can work with it in a variety of ways:

  • Enter powercfg -q followed by a GUID to view the settings of the related plan.
  • Enter powercfg -d followed by a GUID to delete the related plan.
  • Enter powercfg -s followed by a GUID to set the related plan as the active plan.

If you want to see a complete list of all available parameters, enter powercfg /? at the command prompt.

Creating and Optimizing Power Plans

In addition to the preferred power plans included with Windows 10, you can create power plans and optimize existing power plans as needed.

You can create a power plan by following these steps:

  1. On the Power Options page, click Create A Power Plan in the left pane, and then select the default power plan that is closest to the type of plan you want to create.
  2. In the Plan Name field, type a descriptive name for the plan; then click Next.
  3. Use the Turn Off The Display drop-down list to specify whether or when the computer's display automatically turns off. Choose Never to disable this feature. Note that if you are using a device with a battery, you'll have separate plugged in and on battery options.
  4. Use the Put The Computer To Sleep drop-down list to specify whether or when the computer automatically enters sleep mode. Choose Never to disable this feature. Note that if you are using a device with a battery, you'll have separate plugged in and on battery options.
  5. Click Create to create the plan. On the Power Options page, the plan you created is selected by default.
  6. Click Change Plan Settings for your new plan, and then click Change Advanced Power Settings.
  7. Configure the advanced power options as appropriate, and then click OK to save your power plan.

You can optimize an existing power plan by following these steps:

  1. On the Power Options page, select the power plan you want to configure, and then click Change Plan Settings.
  2. Use the Turn Off Display drop-down list to specify whether or when the computer's display automatically turns off. Choose Never to disable this feature. Note that if you are using a device with a battery, you'll have separate plugged in and on battery options.
  3. Use the Put The Computer To Sleep drop-down list to specify whether or when the computer automatically enters sleep mode. Choose Never to disable this feature. Note that if you are using a device with a battery, you'll have separate plugged in and on battery options.
  4. To configure advanced options, click Change Advanced Power Settings, and then use the Power Options dialog box to configure your desired settings. Click OK to save any changes you've made.
  5. Click Save Changes to update the power plan.

Resolving Power Problems That Are Affecting Performance

When it comes to power plans and power management, an aspect that's often overlooked is compatibility. To enter and exit sleep states, your computer must support a Standby sleep state. Similarly, to use hybrid sleep and hibernate, your computer must support the Hibernate and Hybrid Sleep states. One of Windows 10's top features-Fast Startup-is also a sleep state that must be supported.

To determine the sleep states supported by entering powercfg -a at the command prompt. This option lists the available sleep states on the computer and the reasons why a particular sleep state is not supported. If your computer does not support hybrid sleep or fast startup, you should ensure that the related settings are not enabled in firmware.

Every running application and every installed device must support power management for your computer to manage power and sleep states effectively. If an application is causing pause and resume problems, you can check with the developer for an update or newer version that fixes the problem. You can verify that the installed devices support power management appropriately by typing powercfg -energy at a Command Prompt (Admin) window. As shown in the following example, Powercfg provides details about each review step and also lets you know if problems were found.

powercfg -energy

Enabling tracing for 60 seconds...
Observing system behavior...
Analyzing trace data...
Analysis complete.

Energy efficiency problems were found.

14 Errors
11 Warnings
28 Informational
See C:\Users\owner\Documents\energy-report.html for more details.

When the Power Configuration utility finishes tracing and analyzing your computer, review the energy report generated by the utility in a web browser. The analysis results are what you want to focus on.

Read the errors, warnings, and informational messages. If possible, take appropriate action to resolve errors. If a device has a power management issue, you may be able to resolve the problem by installing an updated driver or by changing the device's configuration options.

However, there are many caveats. Active devices, such as an audio device playing music, could prevent your computer from entering sleep mode during the analysis. This is normal, and success or failure is determined by the type of device and the power management settings.

The same device can generate a series of errors. For example, on my computer, a USB audio device prevented the system from automatically entering sleep mode during the analysis, and several other USB related errors were related to this device.

Other common errors you'll see relate to the display or a particular device that may have had pending update requests during the testing. If there were pending requests for the display or any other device, these requests would prevent the computer from automatically powering off the display or the device, and also would prevent the computer from automatically entering a low-power sleep state.

You can get more information about pending requests made by device drivers by typing powercfg -requests at the command prompt. In the following example, a USB audio device has pending requests.

powercfg -requests

DISPLAY:
None.

SYSTEM:
[DRIVER] USB Audio Device (USB\VID_05A7&PID_1020&MI_00\6&2eafe1b7&0&0000)
An audio stream is currently in use.

AWAYMODE:
None.

In this example, note the device identifier: USB\VID_05A7&PID_1020. Each error in the power report is associated with a specific device as well. To know for sure whether a device has a sleep and resume problem, you need to examine the detailed power support information available when you type powercfg -devicequery all_devices_verbose at a command prompt.

Because the information is so detailed, you'll want to redirect the command output to a text file, as shown in this example.

powercfg -devicequery all_devices_verbose > save.txt

Next, open the file in a text editor, such as Notepad, and search the file for the device identifier. Finally, review the output for the device to determine its power capabilities and supported sleep states.

[Next.....Maintaining Performance with Updates]