You can easily follow these do it yourself methods to mantain your PC healthy. They are very simple to follow tasks and you will see instant results.

Your computer is not a dustbin. You don't throw things inside and wait till its full before you clean it. When you do that to your PC its performance decreases almost overnight.

The 6 easy to follow methods will help you overcome all that.

1. Create folders and sub folders in your hardrive. Usually that is drive C. This way you are treating your computer as a bookshelf, where all your books are in their place. You will also find files much more easy this way. Remove also the unwanted files.

These can be image files, music downloads, documents, notebook files, folders and so on.

2. There are many files you don't need on your PC. They are just there wasting your space. Click Start, Search and select one of the file types. It maybe pdf, .jpg, .gif. There is a whole list of file types. You can start with the easy files like .gif. In the search box do not type anything, just hit go to start the search.

You will notice a huge list of files, if you search for .gif files they will all be images. Now you can remove any images you don't need making sure that you know what you are deleting. This method will help you find all the unwanted files.

3. How many browsers do you have? Internet explorer, firefox and did you also download netscape to try it out? Well, you only use one so you can uninstall the rest. Same goes with all of the software, tools, applications and downloads you don't use. Uninstalling them will free out more space.

Your registry needs to be cleaned if you ever downloaded any files from the Internet. There are tools that help you clean your registry, and you should do this about once a month.

4. Do you still have that huge list of files on your Start button. When I click my Start button you see just 6 menus and about 7 sub menus. Those are all shortcuts which can be easily removed. Right click and delete the ones you don't use. You can always start a program from your hard drive C. To make it easy, click Start, Run and type in C:/ and it takes you to drive C, hit program files and you can open any application from there.

You don't need to keep all those icons neither on your desktop. I have none. You can access them by clicking Start, Run and type in C:/ then click the 'up one folder button' to get to the desktop. Button located next to back and forward buttons.

The Start, Programs menu is there just to help you find your applications very easy. But you still can access them very easy now that you now how to use the Run command C:/

Deleting the My Computer Icon, the My Documents icon won't permanently delete them. They can be accessed from the Run C:/ command. For XP users check out tweakxp.com to get more tweaks.

5. In such extreme cases you can even remove outlook express. If you want to make your PC a lot more faster that is going to help. You can use a free email account, like Gmail.com I personally use it daily and it is professional. Probably you will also realize that it is even much better than Outlook express. You get also instant chat with no need to download any software not even the GoogleTalk.

Have you got 4 messangers installed? Well, now you can get rid of them all. If you research google you will find that there are messangers which allow you to chat with your MSN contacts, Yahoo and AOL contacts. Instead of having three messangers you need just one.

I would suggest you check out which is the best from answers.yahoo.com Get feedback.

6. It is not just the inside but also the outside. When was the last time you cleaned up your keyboard, mouse and monitor surface? At least once a year the tower which contains a fan needs to be cleaned. The fan accumilates dust and a technician has the tools to make it perfect again.

You should always use precaution when cleaning electrical hardware. The keyboard can be cleaned by using a dry cloth. After switching off your PC, remove all keys gently from the keyboard and place them in a jar filled with warm water. You do this only once every 5 months. With the dry cloth or slightly wet you can clean the interior of the keyboard.

The monitor and the mouse need not be opened to be cleaned. You can end up damaging them. A great way to protect your PC from dust, and even other possible damage is to cover it after use. A cover for the monitor, speakers, keyboard and tower. I even cover the mouse.

Your PC is a great tool that works practically lets say like magic. Like anything else though you cannot just switch it on, use it and then turn if off. By learning how to optimize your machine you will improve its performance. It will last longer.