Your PC is no different than your car, it needs preventive maintenance routinely to operate properly and avoid crashes and slow downs. There are a few steps to do this manually and may seem burdensome but rest assured that they're absolutely necessary if you want good performance out of your system.

Cleaning up Disk Errors - Run at least once a week. Different things can create disk errors such as power outages, program crashes etc. These errors can compile and eventually cause your system to slow down. To fix this it is recommended you run the "Disk Check" utility.

There are two options here "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors", keep both boxes check and click on start, this may take a while depending on how big your hard drive is.

The program will at some point prompt you to schedule this to run automatically at intervals that you designate, it would be wise to let this happen once a week. Keep in mind that when it does run you may experience a slight slow down in performance while the disk utility is working.

Defragmenting your Hard Drive - Run at least once a month. PCs are very sloppy when it comes to file management. Larger files are broken into smaller files to be stored on your hard drive for easier access later, as this happens more and more and new updates to these files occur and are stored in larger areas of your hard drive, the end result is a fragmented file, put this on a large scale of dozens or hundreds of files and programs you've got a massively fragmented file system that takes longer to retrieve information.

Run the Disk Defragmenter tool, you will typically find this tool under Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools. The tool is pretty straight forward and will list all local disks. You can only select one disk at a time, so choose the one you want to defrag first.

Once you select the disk you can click on the Analyze button, this will examine your drive and let you know if your system if heavily fragmented but you can skip this step and go straight to Defragment and get into the habit of doing this once a month.

Speed up Internet Explorer - Do as needed. If you're accessing the internet on a broadband connection and you can count to 10 before a page finishes loading, you have some issues. Internet Explorer (regardless of what version) has never been an effective or secure browser. Alternatively you should consider another solution such as switching to Firefox or Opera.

However, if you insist on using Internet Explorer there are a couple of things you can do to make it a bit faster.

1. Reduce your web history - click on tools menu, click on internet options and on the general tab find the "Days to keep pages in history" change the value to 1, this history may be handy at times but if you access specific sites often you should have them book marked instead.
2. Stop saving encrypted pages - from internet options, click on the advanced tab and in the security area find the "Do not save encrypted pages to disk" and put a checkmark next to it.
3. Consider switching browsers, Firefox, Opera or Chrome are great choices and they all make it easy to import your IE bookmarks.

Remove Temporary Files - Run once a week. Your PC is programmed to pick up all kinds of temporary files when you surf the web, this makes it easier to load pages you visit a lot, also when working with programs within the Microsoft Office suite lots of temp files are generated and kept stored unnecessarily.

To correct this run Disk Cleanup. Start > Program >Accessories > Disk Cleanup. If you've never run this before it may take a little while as it collects information.

Prior to actually deleting the temp files you'll be prompted and shown the locations that are about to get cleaned up and how much space you'll gain by getting rid of these temporary files.

Never Postpone Microsoft Updates - Most PCs will have this option already enabled automatically and while it may at first appear to be annoying, it is actually very helpful and should be allowed to run and complete updates.

Automatic updates download needed patches and service packs that often take care of new security fixes and needed updates for the Windows operating system, often if these updates are skipped you may actually be leaving your system vulnerable to possible online threats.

Always use Antivirus and Antispyware software - Online threats are a constant danger to your PC, the windows operating system is often laden with security holes that make it easy for hackers, viruses and other malware to make their way into your system and cause severe damage.

Antivirus programs are a must at the very least, keeping viruses away from your system will keep your PC healthy and uninterrupted, many viruses do nothing more than cause performance disruptions and annoyances that in some cases require professional help.

Spyware programs are often hidden on suspcious websites or sent to users via email and are also very dangerous in terms of security and privacy.

Implement these practices on a routinely basis and your system will perform, manual maintenance is never the preferred way to do this however, but users can and should opt for an automated option such as a PC Optimizer tool that addresses all these points.

Most PC optimizers attempt to have an all in-one suite of tools to offer both optimization and protection, check out the review on Avanquest - System Suite™ 9 Pro, this suite does include an Antivirus, Anti Spyware and Firewall protection along with an amazing array of PC optimization tools.