[New Guide] Fix Windows 10 Slow After Update

Windows updates are required to experience the most recent interface, improved performance, updated security, and better compatibility. However, when it comes to real-time performance, things aren't going as planned.

Sometimes, a Windows update might make your computer sluggish. A sluggish PC is more aggravating than not having one at all. Why is your computer operating sluggish after the update？ The answer is in the next section.

Why is my computer slow after Windows 10 update?

Usually, the possible reasons that Windows 10 update may drag down the PC speed are:

• A fault update
• Insufficient available space on C drive
• Insufficient hardware resources
• System Reserved partition is too small
• Corrupt system files
• Background programs
• Junk files and cache files
…

If you’ve already known what makes your PC slow after update, you can go to our solution part to find a suitable way to fix the problem directly. But, some users might not that sure whether their PC is slow or not because sometimes the speed may not have an obvious change.

Therefore, in this situation, we suggest you run a disk speed test to check the reading/writing speed. To run a thorough speed test, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional can do this for you. It’s a powerful disk management tool for Windows 11/10/8/8.1/7/XP PC and has lots of helpful features to help you organize all resources on your devices.

You can even use this tool to extend the C drive after the test, which we will show you how later.

There are 2 test modes: "Simple Mode"(default) and “Pro Mode”. You can choose the better mode according to your needs.

Step 1. Download and run AOMEI Partition Assistant. Click “Test”--> “Disk Speed Test”.

Step 2. In the new window, you can select a test partition, and “Start Test” in "Simple Mode” which is the default mode. You can stop the test during the test.

After clicking the "Start Test" button, the software starts to test the speed of the hard disk, and the read and write speeds are displayed in real-time according to the system. Then, you can export the test result in 3 ways: copy to clipboard, export to text, and export to screenshot.

If you need, you can choose “Pro Mode” to check more.

If you find that the test result indeed shows the disk speed is affected by the OS update, then you need to take measures to fix the problem.

5 ways to fix Windows 10 slow after update

We’ll introduce some ways to speed up your Windows by changing some Windows settings, cleaning the disk, and with AOMEI Partition Assistant to fix this via its various utilities.

▌Section 1. Use Windows to fix PC slow after update

▶ Way 1. Disable some startup programs

Step 1. Press "Ctrl+Alt+Del" to open "Task Manager"

Step 2. Click the "Startup" tab to check the startup programs. You can also check the "Startup Impact" value for each startup program

Step 3. Right-click on the program and choose "Disable" to prevent it from launching on Windows startup.

▶ Way 2. Do disk cleanup

Step 1. Open “This PC”, right-click C drive, and choose “Properties”.

Step 2. Click the “General” tab, and click “Disk Cleanup”.

Step 3. Tick all selections in the box, and click “OK”.

▶ Way 3. Run DISM in CMD

The DSIM command in CMD works by repairing your Windows system image files, which is more helpful than SFC.

Step 1. Type “CMD” in the search box next to the Start button, and right-click the best match, choose “Run as administrator”.

Step 2. Type DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth, and press “Enter” to run it.

After the check, if there’re corrupted files, please type Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth. This command can download and replace the damaged files.

▌Section 2. Use AOMEI Partition Assistant to fix PC slow after update

As we’ve mentioned before, to fix Windows 10 running slow after update, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is an excellent option. Its features can offer you more available choices to reorganize the PC resources to regain the nice performance of your Windows.

▶ Way 1. Extend C drive capacity

The reason we use this tool to extend the C drive not the Disk Management is that this tool doesn’t have many limits like Disk Management (you can open it and check if the “Extend Volume” greyed out or not in the Disk Management). You can merge nonadjacent unallocated space to the C drive, or add the free space on any other local drive to the C drive without deleting any data.

Step 1. Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, right-click the partition which you want to allocate free space from, and select "Allocate Free Space".

Step 2. Type in the size of the free space which you want to cut from the D partition and this free space will be directly added to the C drive.

Step 3. Click "Apply" to execute this operation.

See? In only three steps, your C drive will have more available space.

▶ Way 2. Replace HDD with SSD via cloning

If you’re still using HDD as the primary disk, then Windows slow after update may have a higher possibility to appear on your PC. Because every update accompanies higher requirements for hardware, if your devices are outdated, then updates might devour the PC performance every time.

SSD is, of course, more suitable for modern PC systems. If you want to upgrade your HDD with an SSD but don’t want to reinstall OS and lose all data, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant to clone HDD to SSD.

Step 1. Launch this tool, and plug click "Clone" > “Clone Disk” on the main interface.

Step 2. Select “Clone Disk Quickly”. The “Sector-by-Sector Clone” will copy all sectors of the disk to a target disk no matter it is used or not, so it would take a larger space and more time.

Step 3. Here you need to choose the source disk.

Step 4. Then, select the SSD as the destination space. Here you need to tick the box marked as red so that the SSD would be optimized. It will clone HDD to SSD and perform SSD alignment.

Step 5. You can adjust the partition size on the SSD here. If the SSD is smaller than HDD, the first option will be greyed out. Click Next.

Step 6. After all the settings, in the main interface, click "Apply" > "Proceed".

To sum up

Hope this guide will help you when your computer slows after Windows 10 update. AOMEI Partition Assistant is a quite handy tool when you need to check and optimize your PC. You can also convert file system, convert to GPT/MBR without data loss, defrag your HDD, migrate OS… And you can choose the Server Edition to manage your Server PC.