We know well, also because we have repeated it several times, that the maintenance of the computer is very important so that Windows remains fast and the PC maintains the maximum performance unchanged over time. To help the less experienced, Microsoft has therefore implemented an automatic maintenance system in Windows 8.1 and in Windows 10, so that the user does not have to remember to perform the various operations.
This maintenance includes updating Windows, updating Microsoft Store applications, checking security and malware settings.
Excluded from automatic maintenance, but still performed as daily or weekly activity there is also the optimization of the disk, which would then be the defragmentation of the free space.
More experienced users may prefer to disable these automatic maintenance activities on the PC and perform them on their own, whenever they want, perhaps even using better programs.
READ ALSO: Windows 10 maintenance, what changes and what remains to be done
To configure the automatic maintenance settings in Windows 10 you have to go to the Control Panel -> Protection and maintenance -> Maintenance -> Automatic maintenance> Changing the maintenance settings .
In the following screen you can choose the time of day to perform automatic maintenance every day and you can allow Windows to wake up your computer to perform the tasks.
In this way, Windows will be able to ignore the set time if the PC is in use or turned off and perform automatic maintenance only when the PC is on but not used.
As you can see there are no further options and no way to disable the automatic maintenance feature.
While automatic maintenance is important on the computers of less experienced users, it is not the best tool to keep the computer in good condition.
These activities, in fact, go to occupy resources when the PC remains idle, however causing slowdowns in the event that you return to using the computer before the maintenance ends.
Stopping automatic activities can slow down Windows, which will have to cancel the various checks.
It may therefore be convenient to disable automatic maintenance of Windows 10 .
To do this, you have to open the registry, then going to the Start menu, looking for the regedit tool.
In the left panel of the registry, go to the path HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE> SOFTWARE> Microsoft> Windows NT> CurrentVersion> Schedule> Maintenance .
On the right panel, locate an item called MaintenanceDisabled, right click on it, choose Edit and put Value as 1 as data.
In case the MaintenanceDisabled entry does not exist, then it will be created.
Right-click anywhere in the right panel, select New from the context menu and then DWORD value (32 bit) .
Call the new entry with the name MaintenanceDisabled, right click on it, make Modify and give it the value 1.
Press OK and restart your PC.
This change disables automatic maintenance in Windows 10 and can be easily restarted by giving the value 0 to the MaintenanceDisabled entry.
At this point you can maintain the system manually using external programs or other tools .
For example, defragmenting can be done manually from within Windows 10 by searching for the Defragment and optimize tool on the Start menu.
You can then do the disk analysis and subsequent defragmentation without having to do it automatically.
Note that in the case of SSDs, defragmentation is nothing more than executing the TRIM command which is used to free the blocks of the unit that is no longer in use.
Antimalware scans can be done with Windows Defender at any time.
With the Windows 10 Creators Update, the integrated antivirus is even easier to use thanks to the Windows Defender Security Center tool.
To check for Windows updates, go to System Settings, then to Update & Security> Windows Update and check for updates to be installed manually.
We have seen, in another article, the best PC maintenance programs among which are important: WinDirStat, CCleaner, GeekUninstaller, Malwarebytes, Speccy.
To these we can also add one of the programs to optimize Windows automatically .
