Yesterday a friend of mine was talking with me when he got the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on his PC. That made me think that others might want a few tips on how to optimize your computers before they slow to a crawl or, you get the B.S.O.D. on your computer.

But, before you think of bringing your computer to the repair shop to have it optimized, you should try doing a few simple steps first. Using a computer shop to have your computer optimized so it runs as fast as possible can set you back a couple of hundred dollars for really what you can learn how to do.

Remember, even if you feel uncomfortable with computers, many times you can undo what you just did without any ill side effects. Just be sure to enable the Restore function on your PC before you start to work on it.

First, get rid of all the malware, spyware and anything in between.

Often times when you download peer-to-peer file sharing programs, you unknowingly allow little tiny pieces of software to get installed on your computer. And this sucks the speed right down on it. These little pieces of software can send back information that could be confidential. But most of the time they just slow down the computer.

You can download free spyware removal programs such as Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware or SpyBot Search and Destroy. You might also look at  AntiSpyWare Bot, which is the one I use on my Sony Vaio running Vista Home Premium.

They work great for PC. Mac users will need to check their system requirements. Just simply do a quick Google search using the program names as you search phrase. Or you can also go to download.com and get the program there as well.

Both are quick to install and very friendly to use. They update often which is nice so it keeps your computer protected all the time.

Another simple method you can do is to help your computer is shutting down many of the unnecessary Window’s services. There are many different kinds of services that Window’s thinks it needs in order to operate and honestly, this isn’t the case. Again, do a simple Google search for ‘services to shut down’ in order to get the best results and a faster computer.

If you go to the performance tab under the System option in Control Panel, you can actually optimized Windows there as well. As fancy as the graphical user interface (known also as GUI) can be in a Windows environment, it’s incredibly resource intensive when many different effects and colors are being used. This is completely harmless and will allow for best performance if you turn these non-essential features off.

And lastly, be sure you do update Windows often. You can easily update Windows while you sleep as the operating system allows you to auto-update so you don’t have to do anything.

With these few simple tips that a PC tech would do, you can save yourself some serious money with just a little bit of time invested in your learning and PC improvement.

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