Wouldn’t it be great if your computer was programmed to perform preventive maintenance on its own? This would automatically prevent various computer problems and increase the efficiency and life of your PC. While many computer maintenance tools have become partially automatic, it still  takes your initiative to install and use these programs. Moreover, preventive maintenance not only involves deploying and using the right tools, but also adopting the correct computer practices by the user.

It is also a pity that computer manufacturers do not provide a manual or step-by-step guide for PC maintenance. They simply pre-install a few tools and assume that you will use them without bothering to know whether you know how to use them or not. This article provides basic PC maintenance tips that will help you prevent some of the most common computer problems.

1. Keep your hard drive clean and uncluttered: This is one of the easiest tips to follow yet you may have ignored your hard drive for a while. If you find that your computer is slow and prone to errors, the starting point is to begin by cleaning your hard disk. You simply have to make frequent use of two tools that will quietly run in the background while you go about doing your work. These are:
   1. Disk Cleanup Utility: Main function of this tool is to eliminate unwanted files from your hard disk
   2. Disk Defragmenter Utility: Main function is to organize your files to make their access faster
2. It is easy to ignore these two System tools provided by your operating system but if you make optimal use of these tools, you will be able to prevent a lot of computer problems.
3. Perform regular Registry Cleanup: You may not be aware but an unhealthy Windows registry is one of the main reasons for computer issues and errors. The Windows registry is extensively used to store critical configuration information of your system including operating system, computer applications, and hardware as well as user settings. Since the registry deals with huge amounts of information, there are always chances of unwanted information being left behind that may lead to problems. To clean your registry, you can make use of any of the good registry cleaners available in the market. These tools not only provide registry cleaning service, but also provide registry defragmentation, registry backup and restore facilities.
4. Protect your PC from external threats: Since the Internet became popular, your PC has become more vulnerable to threats from the outside, which includes malicious software like virus, spyware and online criminals trying to hack into your system. You need to install the following three tools to protect your PC from external threats:
   1. Anti-Virus: To prevent viruses, worms and Trojans from attacking.
   2. Anti-Spyware: To prevent Spyware and Adware from sabotaging your PC.
   3. Firewall: To prevent unauthorized people from gaining entry into your computer.

These days many anti-malware manufacturers offer a common software suite that carries all these products in one pack.

You must install tools of reliable brands only and always have them running in real time. You must also update them frequently so that they are equipped to protect you from the latest types of malware.