SHELLEY-Having trouble logging on? Don't throw out your computer just yet, there's help.

Computers can cost upwards of thousands of dollars, and sometimes, they don't last more than a few years. But, that's because they get cluttered with useless files and programs that you don't need.

David Godfrey is a computer technician for the Shelley School District. Eyewitness News Reporter Rick Montañez sat down with him to get tips for you to extend the life of your computer.

"The best things that you can do is keep your computer clean, because that's what's going to keep your computer running..and go faster, the next thing you can do is make sure you have anti-virus and another thing that will protect you is firewall," says Godfrey.

He also gave me a list of computer programs that will do those things to keep your PC running.

First, lets start with keeping your computer clean...Godfrey recommends using C-Cleaners and Auslogic Disk defrag.

What does defrag mean exactly, well check out my desk, I'm a little embarrassed to show you but...its cluttered and things aren't really in their place, think of this as your hard drive...its not functional with everything in the way.

But when you clean it up, it makes doing your work a lot easier.

Next on our list, install a firewall, which is basically another fancy term for putting a digital wall to block hackers and spammers.

"And the good thing about the one we have on the list called Comodo is that you can tell it when your going to be going somewhere and you need to just have rights to everything. And so it will give you about 5 minutes and it will ask you 'hey do you want to be in the mode where you're allowing everything or do you want to go back to safe mode," says Godfrey.

Our final step to extend the life of your digital companion anti-virus software...we're talking about a program called Avast anti virus...this will keep those little bugs from breaking into your personal space.

"Rick: That's where people can get your personal information.
David: personal information, anything on your hard drive is vulnerable at that point."

To keep that from happening, you can install avast, but don't worry if your computer is already a little slow, this won't make that problem worse.

"And the nice thing about this anti-virus program is it doesn't have too many bells and whistles so you can run it on a slow computer and it won't slow your performance."

The programs Godfrey recommends are:
C-Cleaner
Auslogic Disk Defrag
Avast Anti-Virus
Comodo

All can be found on download.com