Clean up, Speed up, Tune up Your Computer

Dirty Computer - Come inside
Originally uploaded by punkwalrus

The picture is kind of a joke. If you need to clean up a computer like this use a can of compressed air and then re-evaluate your living conditions. I wanted to share a few of my favorite utilities I use for this and some manual things I do in addition to using the utilities. At the bottom of this post you can find the links and steps I do.

Spyware is abundant these days, and it slows down your system like crazy. It seems that there are a ton of utilities out there, but for the last six months the one that has been doing the best for me is Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. The free version works great, just follow all of the defaults and this should make a great improvement.

Another cool utility is CCleaner. It will delete your temporary files and other things. Basically CCleaner saves you from manually going to all the temp folders and clearing them out.

Here is what I recommend for cleaning up your computer:

1. Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and run it to remove spyware

2. Download CCleaner and run it to clean up temp files

3. Reset Internet Explorer to defaults
a. Open IE
b. Click Tools, Internet Options
c. Click the Advanced tab
d. Under Reset Internet Explorer settings, click Reset, Click Reset again
e. Close Internet Explorer and open

4. Remove excess startup items
a. Click Start, Run
b. Type msconfig, press enter
c. Click the Startup Tab
d. Uncheck any programs that do not need to start when your
computer does (be sure to leave checked antivirus/spyware protection)
e. Click Apply, OK, Reboot, on Reboot check box to not show message again