Last month my computer was really slow. It was completely annoying and kept me from being as productive online as need to be. It was taking forever to start and then each new website I tried, and each new file I opened, took minutes instead of seconds.

If this is also happening to you, this is a sign that your computer is overloaded and the processors are having a hard time doing what it is told. Or, a program may be taking up too much space or interfering with other programs.

Compare it with someone telling you to run 10 miles when you haven’t done so in years. You will be slow and your joints will hurt like crazy with each step that you take.

Let me tell you How to Clean Up Your Computer

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Cleaning Up Your Computer

One of the first things you want to do is remove any unwanted and unnecessary files. How many times do you download something but never read it? Go through your downloads and remove these files. If you haven’t deleted your download files, they are still sitting there taking up valuable space.

Files & Folders

Next take the time to organize your files and folders. Organize all of your documents, music and image folders.

If you have lots of documents consider storing some of them in the cloud. You can do this by using Dropbox or by storing them in Google Drive. Both offer a certain amount of free storage space for you, for both personal and business.

Another option is to save them to an external hard drive.

I use a lot of PLR (private label rights content) and those files were all sitting on my desktop, in various places, no less. So, using my Google Drive account, I created folders for each of my blogs. Then, I created subfolders based on the topics I cover in each blog.

Then, I started in one place on my computer and loaded those files to the appropriate folder in my google drive account. I moved to the next place on the computer and did the same thing. Once I saw that the files had uploaded successfully, I deleted them off my computer.

You can do the same process for your personal files like photos and videos too.

Email

Do you regularly clean out your email box at home and at the office? This can be another huge drain on your computer. If you use something other than cloud hosted email like gmail, clean out your account on a regular basis.

Programs on the Computer

For your home computer uninstall any programs that you do not use anymore. Changed to a new printer but still have the old one installed? Remove it. The same applies to any games you may have installed for you or your kids.

Use your Task Manager to locate any programs that may always be running in the background. Again this takes up a lot of processes and can slow your computer down. Check on your Task Manager and simply disable any programs that you don’t need on a daily basis.

I regularly use and recommend Ccleaner to help me find the background, startup, and other programs that may be slowing my computer. It also has features to clean up and regulate the computer.

Installing a good antivirus program can be helpful in keeping your computer running in top shape. They can also help detect issues that may be slowing your computer down. Use a program like CCleaner to help eliminate any spyware programs that you may have unintentionally downloaded.

Get into the habit of maintaining your computer. This includes using the Disk Cleanup program that is installed on any Windows computer. This program will help remove your temporary files, unnecessary files and cookies.

Another program to run regularly is the Defragmenter. The first time you run this it can take quite a while to finish, but it will help speed up your computer. Try to use this tool at least once every two months, if not monthly.

Your computer is just like any machine, it needs to be maintained in order for it to perform for you. Get into the habit of cleaning your computer regularly. As well as running faster, you will be more organized and it will be easy to find your files as needed.

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