Maintaining a healthy PC is vitally important, and taking a relatively small amount of time once and a while to clean your PC is a very worthwhile investment. Improving performance and reliability are two huge benefits, and you will almost always find noticeable improvments by performing some or all of the following steps. Where possible I will explain how to complete these steps without downloading software. There are many usefull software tools that can accomplish the following steps for you. So many in fact, it would be very difficult working through each piece of software with you. Feel free to google more information on the following steps, as this guide is most usefull as a guide to the basics. If you are unsure about performing any of the steps, just complete what you feel comfortable with.

1. Check and remove any unwanted or unused programs.

Once and a while go to the control panel in the start menu. Open up Add/Remove Programs and look for any software you no longer use, or no longer require. Removing this software will increase the free space on your hard drive, and quite possibly help your PC run faster and smoother by removing programs that may be taking up memory and resources without you even knowing it.

2. Remove Internet explorer tool bars and add-ons.

Often when you install new software, the installation will install additional things that you may not know, and in fact can slow down internet explorer and your web browsing experience. Particularly common are internet explorer toolbars such as google, yahoo, msn, and other. Most people don't actually use these, and they don't do you any performance favours. From within Internet Explorer, go to tools, then manage add ons. You can see which add ons you currently have enabled and disabled. It is fairly safe to disable almost all of these add ons. Two you will probably want to keep are Java and Flash, as these are required for many websites, including sites like YouTube!

3. Checking and limiting your startup programs and item.

When you start up Windows, many programs and items are most likely starting up in the background without you knowing it. Some of these things could be MSN, Google Desktop (Can really slow your PC) and other more needed ones like your Anti-Virus software. Windows has a built in tool called 'msconfig' than can be started by clicking on the start menu, and the run command. Then type 'msconfig' and press enter. Your goal here is to limit programs from starting up that don't really need to. Explaining msconfig to you here is a little more time consuming, so I would recomment googling for information on this tool, or go to netsquirrel.com who seem to have a nice guide on this in their how-to guides.

4. Make sure you scan for spyware and malware, not just virus's.

Often overlooked, but these days still very necessary, is scanning your PC for spyware. There are an overwhelming variety of software to do this, and unfortunately many programs that advertise themselves as anti-spyware, can easily be fooling you and be malicious software themselves. Two programs I do recommend and often use are 'Spybot S&D' and ' Malwarebytes Anti-Malware '. Links sometimes change, so do a quick google on these tools and you will find them quickly enough. These programs generally do not run automatically, so my advice would be to run these programs manually every couple of weeks, depending on your internet usage.

5. Deleting temporary and unnecessary from your system.

You system slowly fills up with temporary and downloaded files that really do slow things down. Especially Internet Explorer. There is an excellent free program called ' ccleaner ' AKA Crap Cleaner, that does a great job of cleaning things up for you. Once again a quick google for ccleaner will find download locations for it. This little gem of a program will likely clean up mach free space on your hard drive. It's like a breath of fresh air for your system.

6. Keep your Windows system up to date.

Don't ignore those little update messages you receieve in your task bar notification area. The bottom right corner of your screen where all the little icons are. Make sure you check Windows update regulary and if not already, turn on automatic updates from within Windows update. These updates help to ensure your system is kept safe, secure, and running well. Head over to Windows Update now!

7. Lastly, defrag your hard disk drive.

Once again there are many tools to do this, though the built in Windows tool 'Disk Defragmenter' works a treat, and you can find it right now in your start menu under accessories and system tools. Without going into fine details, files on your hard disk don't necessarily get written to the disk in a nice sequential way. In fact, the more full your hard drive becomes, the more fragmented, and slow to read, your files become. Disk Defragmenter re-writes all the fragmented files it can in a nice orderly and sequential way, which helps greatly in speeding up the time it takes for your system to read the files from the hard drive. Be prepared for this to take a long time in many cases, especially if you have not done this before. It can take hours, but it well worth it.

The end!