want to reinstall my Windows 7 Home premium edition OS (original; came with the machine) from backup

[FaridAnsari1950]

Hi!

This is a 6+ years old machine running under HP's preloaded MS Windows 7. OS has been regularly upgraded via internet as advised from time to time by MS/HP; i.e., all service packs, etc installed.

Antivirus is Avast free version, latest with updated virus database as from Avast.

I use CCleaner from time to time.

Machine has become incedibaly slow! Often, it takes 3-5 minutes and more to boot up. And shuts down very slowly, too!! 😞

I was thinking that perhaps reinstalling the OS may help. (I do defrag etc after every few months; NOT a v heavy user).

I understand that I will have to backup my data etc. and I will have to reinstall all my software.

Can some one kindly help me? I am NOT a techie.

Thanks a heap!

Have a great day every day, all! 🙂

Farid Ansari

Male, 67 years, Pakistan

[Huffer]

If you are still running on the original HP factory install, the recovery partition will likely still work. Go to the program HP backup and recovery manager and it should give you some options to restore the computer using software on the hard drive or to make a recovery disk which you can then use to restore it. My only concern, on  laptop that age is whether we would be trying to restore onto a defective hard drive. Bad hard drive will first show up as a general slowdown in performance. Tap F10 as you power up and see if you can find a hard drive test in the BIOS and run it. 

[FaridAnsari1950]

Hi

Thanks a heap for this very quick reply.

You have a point there. Perhaps the description of the problem that I posted gives a hint to the experienced and knowledgeable folks here that the HDD may be acting up.

I wil go the F10 way when I next startup and have a lot of time on my hands. But, I thnik, I will make an updated backup of my important data.

Let's hope the HDD test shows a healthy HDD. ANd, that I have completed a backup. Then, should I manually delete all stuff on the C partition and then start reinstalling original OS (Win 7) from the Recovery partition? Or, ...?

Incidentally, I have Win 10 setup files saved up on a USB (when MS offered a free upgrade to w10). Would it be a better option to go to fresh Win 10 installation from the USB?

Sorry...for loading you with a set of questions right away.  Please take your time.

Thnx.

Farid

[Huffer]

No some of this information is actually critical. Did you ever have Windows 10 installed and activated? If so the Windows 7 recovery partition will probably not work but you can use the Windows 10 installer to just reload it onto the computer and it will just activate with no Key Code needed.