Presumably you have the internet; otherwise you wouldnt be reading this.

The first thing you need to do is protect your computer from online threat, due to broadband, computers are now always online, which means theyre constantly open to threat.

Firstly ensure your windows firewall is active; this can be done as follows

START > CONTROL PANEL > WINDOWS FIREWALL

START is your menu on the bottom left of the windows operating system. When in the WINDOWS FIREWALL folder just turn it on and click ok.

A firewall is basically what it says it is, a wall with which to block or impede potential virus and hack threats.

This provides adequate protection, in addition to this you should consider installing some anti-virus software. Some broadband providers supply you with this, others dont.

The most common anti-virus software is Norton, although it isnt the only one. I recommend visiting download.com, here you can download plenty of free trials from various software companies. Experiment and find one thats simple and effective, read what others have said about the product.

Some of the software on download.com is freeware, so if your lucky you may come across an anti-virus program that costs nothing.

Such programs take a while to configure and get used to but generally supply excellent protection.

Your computer will still be at risk, what you now need to do is have some software that can destroy any problems that manage to get through your defences.

I recommend downloading Spybot: Search & Destroy, again another freebie that can be downloaded from download.com, dependant on how heavily you use the internet you should use this program to scan your computer at least every two weeks.

Download a worm blaster as well, although worms are not extremely common they can have a very negative effect on how your computer operates. Again run such a program occasionally.

The final thing with regards to the internet is cleaning your cookies, history and other offline files. These are all little records of the sites you have visited, It means sites you frequent will load faster second time around. However as these files take up hard disk memory you should clean them out, again every month or so. You can this by clicking the following,

START > CONTROL PANEL > INTERNET OPTIONS

In this folder the bottom box has a CLEAR HISTORY button, clicking this removes any website address that would have been saved in your browsers web address bar.

The middle box allows you to DELETE FILES and DELETE COOKIES, dont worry clicking these wont delete anything important, it will just free up some memory that would be otherwise used by useless files.

Something else which should be done, again about once a month is disk defragmentation.

START > ALL PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > SYSTEM TOOLS > DISK DEFRAGMENTER

In simple terms this organizes files so you can run programs on your computer quicker.

Again, to keep your computer speed high make sure to remove any old programs and games that may be using up memory.

START > CONTROL PANEL > ADD OR REMOVE PROGRAMS

Have a scan through the list and uninstall things you no longer use. Beware though, dont delete anything youre unsure of, some programs in there could play an important part if the functionality of your computer.

Finally, dust the vents on your computer regularly - blockages here reduce the fan effectiveness which causes your computer to overheat and become slow are even crash.

Most new computers become sluggish after a few months, running these checks every few weeks are so should keep it running at optimal speed, and more importantly reduce any infections that could case your computer to cease operating for good.