Some of you may already know this, but there are three easy steps you should do as maintenance on a PC computer about once a week to keep it running as smooth as possible.

Now, I am no Geek Squad expert or anything, but these are some tips I have learned from other experts over the years and have found them to work great. Here are the tips (on Windows XP - may be different for Vista), and they need to be done in this order:

1. Clean disk: go to the Start menu, click on All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Click on OK for drive C:. When the next screen pops up, it will tell you how much space will be retrieved after the clean-up. If you're uncertain about whether or not to check off a box, you can click on the title and see a description. Typically, I do them all except Setup Log Files and Catalog Files for the Content Indexer. Some choose to not select Office Setup files as well. Please read this description before you decide.

2. Scan Disk: go to Start menu, click on My Computer. Right click on the C: drive and go to Properties. Click on the Tools tab. Under Error Checking, hit Check Now. You will get a message that you will need to restart your computer for this step to begin. After restarting, you will get a blue screen and the computer will go through several steps that take quite a while. You won't be able to use your computer at this time.

3. Defrag: There's more than one way to get here. Here's the easiest - go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter. Click on Degragment. When this step is done it will ask if you want to see the report, or close. Just close.

I hope these tips help.