Guide to Windows 10 System Tools

The Windows 10 system tools aren’t entirely different from those in earlier Windows platforms. The one notable exception is perhaps the Task Manager, which has undergone a notable overhaul in Windows 8 and 10. These are a few of the most notable Win 10 system tools that will come in handy.

Windows System Tools

There are many system tools at your disposal within Windows 10, let’s cover a few of them.

Task Manager

As mentioned, the Task Manager is the system tool that has undergone the most notable changes in more recent Windows platforms. The new Task Manager now has more tabs, new graphs and includes a start manager. Here’s a quick rundown of how to get started using it.

1. There are a few ways to open the program, the best way to open it is probably to right-click the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen and select Task Manager from the menu that pops up. 
2. Now, you should see something like this, a list of running Apps and Background processes.
3. Now, click the Performance tab to open the graphs shown in the shot below. The graphs show you CPU, Memory, RAM usage, and more . Below them you have some system resource stats as well.
4. Start-up is another tab included in the Windows 10 Task Manager. This shows you all the software that opens on the startup of your PC. Click a startup item there and press the Disable button to remove a program from the startup. Removing some programs listed on that tab will speed up the Windows 10 startup time.
5. Click the Details tab for further info about the running processes on your desktop or laptop. They can be either running Apps or Background processes managed by Windows. Right-click a process there for further options or click End task to switch it off. 

Explore the many features available to edit and analyze within Windows 10 Task Manager.

MSconfig

MSconfig is a tool that you can further configure your system with.

1. Press the Win key + R to open Run, and then enter “msconfig” there to open the System Configuration window in the shot directly below. It will open on the General tab from which you can select some startup options such as Diagnostic startup that will load only the basic window devices.
2. Click the Boot tab to open further options. There you can select some extra boot options. For example, select the No GUI boot check box to remove the graphical moving bar during the Windows 10 startup.
3. The Tools tab in System Configuration opens a list of handy system tools. As such, you can open system tools listed there by selecting them and pressing the Launch button.

There are many more options available to explore within System Configuration, take a look around.

Resource Monitor

The Resource Monitor is another system tool you can check system resource allocation with.

1. You can open it from MSconfig’s Tools tab or from Task Manager. Overall, it’s still more detailed than the Task Manager.
2. Click the Memory tab to open a list of processes as below. That tab includes further graphs that show how much of your RAM is in use and how much is available. You can close processes from there by right-clicking them and selecting End Process from the context menu.

The Resource Monitor doesn’t just show you RAM allocation, it also give you a more detailed overview of CPU, disk and network resource usage. Click the Disk, CPU and Network tabs for further details for those system resources.

The Registry Editor

The Registry Editor is not exactly a system maintenance tool, but you can make a variety of configurations with it. This is the tool that you can edit the Windows 10 registry with, which is an extensive database of platform and application settings.

1. Open the Start menu and type “run” and select it or hit the Win key + R to open up the Run program.
2. Now, type “regedit” and hit Enter to open the window below.

So how can you customize Windows 10 with the Registry Editor? For starters, you can add a variety of shortcut options to the desktop’s or File Explorer’s right-click context menus. You can also speed up the Windows shutdown with it.

System Info

If you need to check your system specifications, System Info is a tool worth checking out.

1. You can also open this from MSconfig’s Tool tab by selecting System Info from there and pressing Launch. That opens the window below that gives you a detailed overview of your system specs.
2. The above window gives you details for all the system specs pertaining to hardware resources, software and components. System info categories are listed on the left and further details for them are included on the right of the window. It might come in handy for checking hardware details if you need to make some updates.

System Restore

System Restore is a tool that reverts Windows 10 back to a former state. Its restore points will take your laptop or desktop back to a specific date and effectively undo any system changes made afterwards.

1. You can open it by pressing Win key + X, selecting System and System Restore.
2. Then press the System Restore button to open the window below.
3. After opening the above window, you can then select a system restore point (or date) to revert back to from there. This might be a handy tool for restoring lost documents or files if they got deleted. Simply revert back to a restore point before they got deleted.
4. You can also fix a corrupted user account with a system restore. Simply press F8 when Windows 10 boots up to log in to Safe Mode, and then open the System Restore tool from there. Select to revert back to a restore point before the user account was corrupted to fix it.

Disk Cleanup

The Disk Cleanup tool is also handy for system maintenance. This is a tool that you can delete junk files with and free up some storage space on disk.

1. Open the Start menu and enter “disk cleanup” in the Search bar, just start typing. You can also type it in Cortana’s search bar to find and open this tool’s window as shown below.
2. The window above tells you how much space you can free up with the tool. Select the checkboxes to choose specific file categories to delete, and select Clean up system files to erase them. The tool could free up more than 500 megabytes of disk storage.

So those are a few of the best system tools in Windows 10. With them you can fix things, free up system resources, customize context menus in Windows 10 and clean up your hard disk. Plus there are a few other tools such as Event Viewer, Device Manager and Disk Management. Peruse the Windows 10 OS and familiarize yourself with the vast amount of tools at your command.