My laptop was taking thirty seconds to open a browser. I was convinced I needed a new one. A friend who works in IT spent ten minutes on it while we were hanging out and it ran like a different machine afterward. Nothing he did cost money.

Most slow computers are not old — they are just loaded with background processes and temporary junk that has accumulated over months or years. Here is what he did, in the order he did it.

Kill startup programs

This is the single biggest culprit. Every app that launches when your computer starts is stealing RAM and CPU cycles before you have even opened anything. On Windows, open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), go to the Startup tab, and disable everything you do not need running at boot. Spotify, Adobe updaters, printer utilities, game launchers — all of them can wait until you actually open them.

On a Mac, go to System Settings > General > Login Items and remove unnecessary items. Most people find at least five programs they did not even know were launching at startup.

Clear the browser bloat

Your browser is probably the heaviest program on your computer. Uninstall extensions you have not used in the last month. Each one is a tiny program running in the background. Clear your cache and browsing data — cached files can balloon into multiple gigabytes.

If you keep dozens of tabs open, use a tab suspender extension. It unloads inactive tabs from memory while keeping them visible. An open tab is not just a bookmark — it is an active process consuming resources.

Free up storage space

Your operating system uses free disk space as virtual memory. When your drive is more than 85 percent full, the system struggles to manage temporary files and performance drops noticeably. Delete unused applications, empty the downloads folder, and run the built-in Disk Cleanup tool on Windows or Storage Management on Mac.

Do not ignore the Recycle Bin or Trash. I had 12 gigabytes sitting in mine without realizing. Emptying it freed enough space that my computer stopped grinding its disk every time I opened a file.

The restart you have been putting off

If your computer has been running for weeks without a full shutdown, restart it. A restart clears RAM, terminates orphaned processes, and applies pending system updates. Windows and macOS both accumulate small memory leaks over long uptimes. A restart once a week keeps performance consistent.

After the restart, open only the programs you need right now. Do not restore your entire previous session. That defeats the purpose.