People nowadays seem to never have the time to performing regular maintenance tasks on their PC and then cry when their system goes down one day or runs so slowly. Microsoft Windows can be compared to a car. It is much more complex and will require more care and attention to keep running smoothly as the years pass by.  Most of maintenance means getting rid of stuff you don't need, checking your system for potential problems, and defragging your hard drive.

1) Removing programs you never use. Let's face it, you're going to use a lot of those free programs that came with your computer. Don't feel guilty, a lot of them aren't much use to anybody else either. The one thing you should feel guilty for is allowing these programs to sit on your computer wasting space that your other valuable data and more important programs could be using.

To remove these programs, go to Start > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. Scroll down the list and remove things you don't use. BE CAREFUL about programs you don't recognize. They are either spyware which you don't want, OR, important components that your computer needs to function. Search up the program's name on www.google.com to see what it does. 

After you have finished removing programs. You should download and run the Microsoft Cleanup Utility. The description and download link is available here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=290301 This program will cleanup traces of programs that were previously removed but for some reason still had traces in your Windows registry, making your system "messy".

2) Deleting temporary files. Go to C:\Windows\Temp and delete everything you see in there. Open up Internet Explorer, click on Tools > Internet Options and click on "Clear History" in the window that shows up. Click "Yes" to clear your history of website.

3) Hard drive maintenance. Go to My Computer, right-click your C drive and click on "Properties". Click on the "Tools" TAB. After the defragment window opens up, click on Defrag at the bottom and begin the process. Defragging is highly recommended for all your hard drives and you should do it once a month for all hard drives. After this is done, go back to the Properties window for your hard drive and click on the "Tools" tab again and click on "Check Now". Check "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors", and then click "Start". In some cases, it will ask you to restart your computer.   NOTE: The defragging and error-checking steps will take many hours so it's best to start these before you go to bed. Also, make sure you do these steps ONE AT A TIME.

YOU ARE DONE! Not so bad, eh? Run through this at least once a month.