Old laptop running slow

[ppppenguin]

The Ubuntu CD booted with ease and the machine runs nicely. For better or worse this laptop needs to run Windows - I'm not going to attempt Linux host with a Windows VM on a low-ish power machine. So it looks like a system rebuild with Vista. Yes, you heard me right, that evil pile of ordure. I could demote it to XP but finding the drivers might not be fun. At least if I do a factory restore from the hidden partition it will be no worse than new. There's no important data on the machine so no backup needed.

To be done:
Factory restore
Remove HP c***ware and get it looking decent
Instal Firefox, Thunderbird, Office 2000, Irfanview, Sumatra PDF and Xilinx tools

I suppose the problem could be the HDD but I'll overlook that possibility for now. The BIOS can run a HDD check so I might do that first.