Many of us use Microsoft Teams daily for communication and collaboration, making it an essential tool in the modern remote-working era. When Teams starts demanding high CPU and memory resources, our workstations may slow down, affecting our productivity and causing frustration. Understanding the root causes of these performance issues is the first step toward resolving them and restoring the efficient use of Teams.
At times, the increased CPU and memory usage can stem from Teams’ configuration settings or from running outdated software versions. The app’s tendency to run at startup or its background processes might also contribute to excessive resource consumption. Reducing these demands is critical, not just to improve Teams’ performance, but also to ensure that our computers can handle other tasks simultaneously without lag or slowdowns.
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Optimizing Performance and Resource Usage
We will explore how to address high CPU and memory usage in Microsoft Teams by adjusting the app’s settings and managing resources within Windows.
Adjusting Microsoft Teams Settings
Disable Auto-start: Preventing Teams from starting automatically when you boot up your system can reduce its impact on memory and CPU.
Additional Settings: We also suggest disabling read receipts and reducing other non-essential features to alleviate the strain on system resources.
Managing Windows System Resources
| Task Manager | Adjust Visual Effects | Privacy Settings |
| Using Task Manager, we monitor Teams’ resource usage and close it if needed. | We can tweak the visual effects in Windows settings for performance, which can limit UI animations and graphics that consume resources. | Altering privacy settings can prevent unnecessary background tasks that may affect Teams’ performance. |
By taking control of both Teams and Windows settings, we help ensure a balanced and efficient use of system resources, leading to an optimized performance of Microsoft Teams.
Updating and Reinstalling Teams
Staying updated with the latest version of Microsoft Teams can resolve many known bugs and compatibility issues. Should problems persist, reinstalling Teams may be the remedy.
Checking for Updates
We always need to ensure that Microsoft Teams is up-to-date as updates often include crucial fixes. To check for updates, within Teams, click on your profile and select ‘Check for updates.’ The application will then seek out and apply any available updates to ensure optimal performance.
Reinstallation Process
If updating does not solve performance issues, then we should proceed with reinstalling Microsoft Teams. First, we must uninstall the program through the ‘Apps & features’ section in Windows Settings. Afterward, download the latest installer from the official Microsoft Teams website and execute the setup to reinstall.
| Step | Action | Purpose |
| 1. Uninstall Teams | Via ‘Apps & features’ | Clearing outdated files |
| 2. Download Installer | From Microsoft’s official site | Ensure the latest version |
| 3. Reinstall Teams | Run the setup file | Restore Teams to default settings |
By taking these steps, we can often clear out any lingering issues and refresh Teams for enhanced performance without the burden of excessive CPU and memory usage.
Clearing Cache and Adjusting Virtual Memory
In this section, we’ll address two key approaches that can significantly reduce high CPU and memory usage for Microsoft Teams: clearing the cache and configuring virtual memory settings.
Clearing Microsoft Teams Cache
Clearing cache can resolve performance issues and is particularly effective when facing high memory usage. Microsoft Teams stores temporary data that can become corrupt or overload the application, leading to higher resource consumption.
- Close Microsoft Teams completely by right-clicking the Teams icon in the taskbar and selecting ‘Quit’.
- Open the File Explorer and navigate to
%appdata%\Microsoft\Teams. - Delete the contents within the following folders:
CachedatabasesGPUCacheIndexedDBLocal Storagetmp
Restart Teams after performing these steps to see if the issue is resolved. By doing this, you ensure that Teams starts fresh, without any leftover data that might be causing high memory usage.
Configuring Windows Virtual Memory
For systems with low RAM, adjusting virtual memory can help. Windows uses a portion of the hard drive as if it were RAM, called virtual memory or the paging file. Increasing this can alleviate the strain on physical memory.
- Press the Windows key, type
Advanced system settings, and press Enter. - Under the Performance section, click on ‘Settings’.
- Go to the ‘Advanced’ tab, and under Virtual memory, click ‘Change’.
- Uncheck ‘Automatically manage paging file size for all drives’.
- Select ‘Custom size’ and set the Initial size (MB) and Maximum size (MB) based on recommendations for your specific system requirements.
- Click ‘Set’, then ‘OK’ and restart your computer.
By configuring these settings, we are allowing the system to more efficiently manage memory, particularly when running memory-intensive applications like Microsoft Teams. Please note that setting the virtual memory too high or too low can have adverse effects, so it’s important to follow recommended values based on your system’s specifications.