How to speed up your computer

You can spend alot of money on software with fancy claims to speed up your machine but I have found the free software below to to be very good at keeping my pc free from trouble. I once had a machine brought to me that had 234 viruses and 86 adware/spyware on it and was running so slow it took 5mins to boot. After talking to the client I discovered he had a direct connection to the internet i.e no router. So if you dont have one get a router!

 Browser cache

CCleaner (Crap Cleaner) is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. That removes unused and temporary files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space. The best part is that it is fast! (normally taking less that a second to run) and Free. This is the  best clean up tool which is safe for both the files it deletes and the registry entries it removes.

Speed up booting

Startup Control Panel
Clear out all those software items that dont need to be running in your system tray on every boot.
Startup Control Panel is a nifty control panel applet that allows you to easily configure which programs run when your computer starts. It is simple to use and, like all my programs, is very small and wil not burden your system. A valuable tool for system administrators! Startup Control Panel is compatible with all modern versions of Windows, including Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP.

Check for adware and spyware

Spybot Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you did not intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you do not see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies. Spybot-S&D is free, so there is no harm in trying to see if something snooped into your computer, too.

Make it virus free

avast! antivirus Home Edition is available free of charge for non-commercial home use only.
This one finds the viruses the others dont including Norton Antvirus.

Protect from hackers

Comodo Internet Security. The Latest version of the award-winning Firewall. You must have a good firewall, to run a machine using windows firewall only is madness.

Use Open source Software

Browser
Use Firefox for your main browser

Email
Use Thunderbird for your email.