Once you have installed and ran these programs, you should notice a definite increase in your PC’s productivity.

• AVG – Anti-virus protection. It’s free, it works, and it can be configured to update automatically. Don’t be suckered into that Norton subscription pre-installed on your computer. Set it to auto-update and auto-scan and forget about it. Cost: FREE
• CCleaner – Temp file and registry cleaner. Everytime you visit a website or uninstall a program, bits of information are left all over your computer’s hard-drive. Clean them out with this program whenever your internet browsing gets too slow for you. Cost: Also FREE
• Spybot – Malware (adware & spyware) protection. The internet is full of malicious little scripts designed to do stuff that you don’t want and take you to sites where you don’t want to go. Spybot protects you from them. Scan your computer with it preferably weekly, at least monthly. Cost: NADA
• Auslogics Disk Defrag – You know how things tend to get scattered around your place the more you are there? Your computer does the same thing, with bytes of data. Get things orderly again with this program and you should be able to get at your data a bit quicker. Run it once a month. Cost: GRATIS

There you have it. Free & easy PC maintenance that should help you get back to the high-speed surfing of the questionable sites that slowed your computer down in the first place.