A few years ago I used to have to reinstall Windows every 2 or 3 months because of various reasons. The main reason was because I install a lot of applications then uninstall them. This leaves dead registry entries which after a while start slowing down your computer. Here are a few tips on how to keep your desktop clean and running smoothly for long periods of time.

Registry

If you want a healthy computer you have to have clean registry! The best registry cleaner is WinASO, but I use Eusing Free Registry Cleaner because it’s free . I usually clean my registry once a day, but you can do more than that. This is one case where more is better .

Antivirus

Having an antivirus software is a MUST! I use NOD32, a very good antivirus program which has never let me down. If you want a free alternative try Avira. It’s not necessary to run a full computer scan too often, just let it do it’s job in the background. Be sure to have it updated with the latest virus signatures available .

Other software

Using the free alternatives of your software can also boost up your computer speed . For example Foobar2000 instead of Winamp, Pidgin instead of Yahoo! Messenger or MSN Messenger or AIM or Google Talk or etc. You can even try OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office although it can be a bit hard to get used to OpenOffice.org. Why use these free alternatives? Well first of all they don’t have all the interface tweaks the original versions have, and this means less memory and CPU is needed. Secondly, they are free . And last but not least, you can actually like the free alternative more than the original version! Happened to me with Pidgin, where I use Yahoo!, MSN, Facebook Chat and GTalk. You should also try using Google Chrome as a web browser because it’s super fast!

Another important thing to do is to manage your startup. Some programs that run in the background are just useless but eat up loads of memory and CPU .

Conclusion

The last time I installed my OS was in May last year (and it’s still running great!) and before that I had it for like 9 months .