Things to speed up my PC

Alright, it seems as if my computer has been slowing down over the course of its lifespan. I have defraged it and ran disk cleanups, which did work for a good amount of time, but I wish to do more for maintain it.

What else should I do to speed up my PC? Can I trust stuff like CCleaner?

CCleaner is great maintenance freeware. Use it to do the usual cleanup.

Just did and finished a cleanup. Should I also clean up the registry?

Yup. Backup the changes first. You almost never need to restore to the backup but just to be safe.

Edit: And oh,do look at your startup programs. That list just grows.Disable the programs you don't need at startup.Should help.

I'm probably going to sound dumb. So basically back up the registry, disable some of the start up programs, and then clean the registry?

Again, sorry, I just woke up and I feel pretty stupid at the moment.

Do you have a SSD? Also try to uninstall as many of the programs you never use as possible. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rQjLpR9Ruc

Sadly, no, I do not have a SSD, just 2 500 GB hard drives.

They can be done separately. Let the program analyze the registry.It'll then show the number of errors once it is done.This is when you can clear the errors.CCleaner will ask you if you want to backup your registry prior to cleaning it.

Startup programs can be disabled at any point.No worries there.