Two things I have on my PC that really make a difference how well it runs:
1.
Anti-virus program. I use Norton's. Sure it costs me something each year to renew my subscription but I have never had any trouble with viruses nor worms with it on. There are three levels of protection you can buy. I just get the anti-virus. I haven't found a need for the others. I do buy the one for multiple computers since I work at home and have several. Get it here:
http://antivirus.norton.com/norton/p...996&country=US
I've heard McAfee is good too but haven't had enough experience with it to report.
2. The one that really makes a difference is
Advanced System Optimizer that automatically optimizes my computer as often as I schedule it to. At a minimum I have it find and remove junk files that are taking up space on the hard drive and aren't needed. Weekily it finds several hundred and deletes them. I also have it find and correct errors in the register and optimize it as well as check for outdated drivers and update them. Those three things make it start up and run much faster without any "crashes."
In addition, it can defragment the hard drive so that files are contiguous and quicker to access (I don't do that much because it's very time consuming and doing the other things is keeping my hard drive less than 4% fragmented.) It can also scan for spyware and clean it off. Norton's does that too so I just let it do it. It can also clean hidden privacy traces which I don't care about cause I've nothing to hide with my internet browsing.
As I said, ASO (Advanced System Optimizer) can do any or all of that automatically without any input once it's scheduled to do so. It's exactly what you'll pay the computer store to do when you take it in cause your computer "doesn't seem to be running right." It has a lot of other "tools" that can be used to fix and optimize other things on the computer but they are not automatic and I don't use them. I just let the automatic ones run and that improves my computer enough.
Here it is if you're interested:
http://www.systweak.com/aso/