You fire up your PC, then you patiently wait… and wait…and continue to wait as your computer feels like it’s getting slower as the days go by. Sounds like it’s time to do a little spring cleaning to clean and optimize your system.

You wouldn’t sweep your carpet with a broom. That’s crazy talk! It would take all day and you’d leave dirt behind. We need the right tools to save us time, frustration and money, whether we’re cleaning our house or our PC. The free utilities below will help you clean up and optimize your system, just in time for Spring. Without further ado, here are 5 of my absolute favorite free utilities that’ll help you get the job done.

1. Advanced SystemCare Free (Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/Server 2008/7/NT)

Advanced SystemCare Free is an all-in-one utility that cleans and optimizes your PC, enhancing it’s performance. With one click of the circular “Care” button, the utility begins by maintaining your Windows as it scans and removes spyware and adware, cleans your registry, erases your browsing history and traces and cleans up your junk files. Once it completes the maintain Windows cycle, it moves on to “Diagnose System” as it optimizes and repairs your system settings, scans and protects spyware from being installed, defrags your harddisk and scans to find hijacked settings. Want more? There’s also a “Utilities” section to further repair, optimize and clean up your system. Don’t forget to run this program, since the free version doesn’t allow you to schedule it.

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2. Glary Utilities (Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

Glary Utilities launches in an easy to use interface in a “1-Click Maintenance” tab. You have 6 different focus areas in Registry Cleaner, Shortcuts Fixer, Startup Manager, Temporary Files Cleaner, Tracks Eraser and Spyware Removal with a check mark by each. Simply clicking “Scan” will provide a deep scan of your system and display any problems found in each area. After finding the problems determined from the scan, click “Repair Problems” to quickly fix the issues found.

Once you’re finished with the 1-Click Maintenance, you can also explore the “Modules” tab which gives you even more tools in the following tabs; Clean Up & Repair, Optimize & Improve, Privacy & Security, Files & Folders and System Tools. There are quite a few tools to take advantage of.

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3. Revo Uninstaller (Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/Server 2008/7)

Revo Uninstaller lets you uninstall programs in a quicker and smarter way than the standard Windows Add/Remove functions. When launching this program, you’ll see all the installed application’s titles and logos. It works by scanning before and after you uninstall an application. You can right-click on any of the applications and get options such as Uninstall, Remove Entry, Search on Google, Install Location and Open Registry Key. When uninstalling, you get different uninstall settings (Basic, Built-in, Moderate and Advanced). This provides different levels of scanning, i.e. Basic is your typical uninstall without the scan and additional options, while Advanced takes longer to execute but gives you a deep and thorough scan of your hard drive and registry for all the left overs.

2. Smart Defrag (Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista/Server 2008/7/NT)

Smart Defrag specializes in defragmenting your hard drive to run an a more efficient manner, but stands out among the other defrag utilities with it’s ability to also optimize your disk performance. Launching the application gives you a control panel that includes options to startup or just analyze Defrag Only, …, or Deep Optimize. The program works by organizing your data and files on your PC for better performance. You can also setup auto defrag, which runs in the background very quietly without tying up your resources.

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5. CCleaner (Windows 98/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7)

I couldn’t conclude this list without one of my favorite utilities I’ve been using for years, CCleaner. What does the C in CCleaner stand for you may ask? C = Crap and cleaning the crap your computer has is exactly CCleaner’s specialty. It eliminates all the tracks left behind from your browsing with Firefox, Internet Explorer and other browsers. It also erases traces from many of the applications you run, while providing options to clean your Registry and scan for any invalid entries. It provides additional options to uninstall programs, but I recommend sticking with Revo Uninstaller for any uninstall.

I use each of the applications mentioned above and personally love them all. Each are valuable, free and quite effective. It’s difficult to choose a favorite, but Revo Uninstaller is so unique and useful. The ability to remove all traces of folders, registry entries, etc when uninstalling applications is fantastic. Do you have any favorite, free maintenance tools you’d recommend? As always, I’d love to hear from you.