Regular Maintenance On Your PC is Key

"Most people -- even IT pros who spend their lives maintaining corporate computing infrastructure -- are so busy with life, families, work and the rest that they tend to leave periodic home PC maintenance tasks at the bottom of a long list of things that never get done. With that in mind, we've put together this concise guide to some of the most important and oft-delayed or forgotten maintenance tasks that Windows PC users can perform regularly to keep their computers -- and data -- healthy through the year."

This article covers some of the things that - ideally - we're all doing to keep our PCs in tip-top shape. Off-site data backup, driver updates, system backups, and even registry cleaners - all have their place. Registry cleaners are certainly a somewhat dubious suggestion - I've never seen any data that objectively proves that any of those products can enhance PC performance. When I use CCleaner, I allow it to scan the system registry to get rid of the cruft, but I harbour no illusions that it will somehow make my PC faster.

What are some of your regularly-scheduled maintenance tasks that you do (or should be doing) that aren't on this list?