We’ve all been there. Your PC starts to feel sluggish, or you’re staring at a “low storage” warning, and the first instinct is to reach for a third-party cleanup tool. I’ve done it more times than I’d like to admit. Install it, run a scan, watch a bunch of “issues” pop up, and hope it magically fixes everything. But here’s the thing. Windows has gotten a lot better at handling this stuff on its own.

The tools built into the OS today already cover the things most cleanup apps claim to fix, like clearing storage, managing startup apps, and keeping your system running smoothly. In a lot of cases, those third-party tools aren’t just unnecessary, they can add bloat, push ads, or make changes you don’t actually need. At this point, using them is a risk you can skip entirely.

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In 2026, almost every PC is running a solid-state drive (SSD) of some kind. With an SSD, cold boot times are already extremely short. My PC boots in less than 20 seconds, and even an older SATA SSD will easily get you to the desktop in less than 45 seconds. The amount of time you actually save by using Fast Start-up on modern hardware is barely noticeable.

Fast Start-up can cause extra problems no one wants.

Shutting down is sometimes necessar.

The real issue comes from the fact that Fast Start-up isn’t a true shutdown. When you click Shut Down with Fast Start-up enabled, the Windows kernel stays partially loaded and drivers are kept in their current state. Despite the speed gains, that sometimes introduces problems. I’ve run into more situations than I can count where a true restart is the easiest way to fix things. Whether you’re installing new drivers, applying system updates, or trying to clear out a bugged driver state, you need a “clean slate”.

Fast Start-up gets in the way of all of that. You might notice that some updates don’t seem to stick until you do a full restart, or that bugs you’d expect to resolve after shutting down your PC and turning it back on stick around. The classic advice to “turn it off and on again” is great, but if you have Fast Start-up enabled, shutting down and powering back on doesn’t actually reboot the system—it just resumes with all the bugs in place.

Getting to the BIOS is more complicated than it should be

Fast Start-up also makes getting into your BIOS a bit more difficult. Normally, you just power on the PC and rapidly tap F2 or Delete to enter the BIOS. When Fast Start-up is active, the system skips parts of the initialization process so quickly that the window to press those keys often disappears entirely.

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However you use Linux, whatever your situation, there’s a simple way to create a new directory. The terminal mkdir command is probably the one you use the most, but there’s a lot to learn about it, and you may find a GUI app easier.

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If your Linux system crashes and locks you out, you risk losing everything—files, data, time. If you have a bootable Linux USB recovery disk, tough, you’ll be ready to restore, repair, and rescue your system before it’s too late.

Why is it important to have a spare Linux USB disk?

It can happen to the most seasoned Linux users: a corrupted update operation that hoses your system, and you know how frustrating and annoying it can be to get it back up and running. While the temptation may be to start all over again, a recovery drive can save the day. A bootable Linux USB recovery disk is a fully functional Linux distribution that you can run directly on your computer without installing it on its hard drive. There are many important reasons to have a Linux USB recovery disk handy. With it, you can perform essential operations, troubleshoot issues, and access important files without booting the installed operating system.

System Recovery

Chief among the reasons for having a bootable USB disk handy is for system recovery. Linux installations are usually very stable and less prone to failure than other mainstream operating systems. However, bad things can happen, and a bootable USB disk can help you fix issues when your system becomes unbootable or inaccessible. To do this, you’d typically boot from the USB disk and use built-in tools like GRUB to repair the bootloader or fsck to check and repair file system errors.

File Access

If your system does become inaccessible and unresponsive beyond recovery, a bootable USB disk allows you to access and back up important files to another storage device. You can then reinstall the system and then transfer the important files back to the system.

Malware Scanning and Removal

Even Linux has malware. A bootable USB disk allows you to access a clean Linux environment, which you can use to detect and remove malware without directly interacting with the infected system. Typically, you can use a tool like ClamAV or a rootkit detection tool like chkrootkit or rkhunter to scan for malicious files on your system.

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When a file is no longer serving a purpose, it’s time to delete it, and you probably know at least one way of doing so. But there may be more ways than you realize, and each has its own advantages, quirks, and things to teach us.

From GUI to command line and even lower-level than that, discover more about getting rid of files.

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The usual method to debloat an Android phone requires setting up an ADB connection with a computer and sending commands from the terminal. It’s not the fastest or the safest way to get the job done. Let me show you a faster and safer method.

Why you can’t remove bloatware easily

You might have noticed that many apps (not counting system apps) were already on your phone when you bought it, and there is no way to remove them. Their ‘uninstall’ or ‘disable’ buttons are greyed out. The usual way of getting rid of such apps is to connect your phone to a computer with a USB cable and send ADB commands through a terminal.

It’s a cumbersome process, especially if you’re not used to the terminal. The other method is to root the device in order to gain access to the restricted system space and delete stubborn bloatware directly from the phone. I wouldn’t recommend it unless your phone is already rooted. It’s not worth voiding your warranty or borking the firmware. Lucky for us, there’s a better way. You don’t need a computer, and you don’t need to type any commands into a terminal box. It can all be done on your phone with a simple app.

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Let’s start with the basics. “DNS” stands for “Domain Name System.” An easy way to understand DNS is to think of the Contacts app on your phone. You simply search for a person’s name and click the “Call” button, but the phone number is what actually connects you to them.

A DNS server is the Contacts app – it acts as the middleman that translates simple domain names into the IP addresses that your phone needs. Your internet provider has its own DNS server, but it’s very simple to plug in a custom DNS server. There are several free, high-quality third-party DNS servers to choose from.

For most people, the standard ISP-provided DNS server is perfectly fine. However, there are some clear advantages to using a custom DNS. It boils down to speed, privacy, and security—three very important things.

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What is the Android Debug Bridge (ADB)?

ADB is a tool provided by Google for developers to debug and test their software on Android phones. It provides access to certain features that aren’t available to regular users, and since anyone can technically use ADB, you have a way to use these advanced features even if you’re not a developer. The internal structure of ADB is based on the classic client-server architecture. There are three components that make up the entire process.

-The client, i.e. the PC/Mac/Chromebook you have connected to your Android device. We are sending commands to our device from the computer through the USB cable or wirelessly.

-A daemon (known as “adbd”) that runs commands on an Android phone. The daemon runs as a background process on each device.

-A server that manages communication between the client and the daemon. The server runs as a background process on the computer.

Because there are three pieces that make up ADB (the client, the daemon, and the server), certain pieces need to be up and running in the first place. If you have freshly booted the computer (and you don’t have it set up to start the daemon on boot), then you will need it to be running before any communication can be sent to the target Android device.

Most of the best phones on the market run Android, and it’s preferred by many for being a more open operating system than Apple’s iOS. However, there are many things on Android that are also hidden from the average user. Thankfully, many of these capabilities can be accessed by using the Android Debug Bridge (ADB).

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Your Linux command line is filled to the brim with commands you can use to learn about and use your device more effectively. Recently, I figured out a few handy uses for the lsusb command.

In case you aren’t familar, the lsusb command gets its name from the ls command you might already be familiar with. ls is short for “list” and of course usb refers to the Universal Serial Bus, the category of computer port we’re all using all the time.

Identify a device’s vendor

Sometimes, when you get a flash drive or a computer peripheral, it’s unclear who the manufacturer is. So-called white label products may have one company’s logo on them, but that company simply bought it from another and stamped it themselves. If you want to find out who the real manufacturer is, otherwise known as the vendor, you can check that with the lsusb command. You’ll see a bunch of devices listed the first time you run it, but if you unplug the device and run lsusb again, you can identify the one you’re investigating because it will disappear in the second readout. For example, here’s an entry I identified for a flash drive I have:

Bus 004 Device 011: ID 13fe:6700 Phison Electronics Corp. USB DISK 3.0

I identified it by noticing it was missing from lsusb’s output after I removed it.

In this case, the vendor’s ID code is 13fe, and lsusb has identified that vendor as Phison Electronics Corp. If I wanted to learn more, or if lsusb for some reason couldn’t produce a vendor name, I could do a web search like “device vendor ID 13fe” and an online database will likely be able to identify it for me and show me other products it produces.

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