Two More Ways to Prolong the Life of Your PC

5. Use anti-virus

So far all of the tips to prolong the life of your PC were hardware related but don't forget that you also need software protection too. There are literally hordes of people out there happy to take advantage of your unprotected system. And viruses and malware can slow your machine right down to a crawl and in some cases even encrypt your hard drive until you pay a hefty ransom.

Any kind of intrusion is going to be bad so do yourself a favor and get some decent anti-virus software. There are plenty of free ones so there's really no excuse.

See also - The Best Free Antivirus Software.

6. Use anti-spyware

In addition to an anti-virus program you should also download a program that can tackle malware and spyware. A really good program for this is the highly rated CCleaner.

This free program scans your PC's registry for unwanted, corrupt paths and gives you the option to make a backup before cleaning begins. Although there is not an option to restore the removed items if you change your mind, the backup is a simple .reg file - you just have to double click it to bring back your deleted registry keys.

CCleaner does a whole lot more than just clean out your registry it finds and clears all your Windows Temporary Files and removes your browser or start menu run histories, cookies and a whole lot more.

It runs in all flavors of Windows, including Microsoft's latest operating systems Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Download - CCleaner now from the QBS PC Help website.