Providing maintenance and security updates on client websites is something I do daily. Unfortunately I do not have the resources to give the same services to the computers in my client offices. There’s just no way to adequately emphasize how important it is to keep up with security on your own machine. Dusting off the cobwebs and doing maintenance on my computers is something I do way more often than I service my car. I have a laptop and a spare workstation and although a good bit slower than my main workstation I’ve had to fall back on them a time or 2 when something goes wrong. I try to go through the procedure at least every 3 months by and checking all my security settings and cleaning out any programs or utilities I don’t use or need anymore. My 2 most used weapons of choice are Vipre Internet Security runs continuously in the background protecting me from viruses and malware. CCleaner is a disk cleanup tool that helps find unused junk lying around and after I get through with it I throw in a little optimizing with the Windows Defrag tool. This annual “Spring Cleaning” reminder from Vipre gives pretty complete instructions for the procedure I use and I heartily recommend everyone going through this at least on an annual basis if not sooner.
https://blog.vipreantivirus.com/featured-article/spring-time-clean-computer/