Was your laptop upgraded from Windows 8? I've not seen as many problems on W8 upgrades as W7 ones. Then again, some W7 upgrades have been uneventful, while others have been nightmares. And, sometimes it made a difference what all was installed on a system when the upgrade was performed.
That's good. I will however, mention a few things: Without knowing how much data you have nor the speed of your internet service, you might consider an external hard drive as well. A simple COPY/PASTE command from Documents/Downloads/Music/Pictures/Videos to a respective folder on the external hard drive will speed up the restoration process. In the future, the hard drive can be used for regular system image backups, using an imaging program, such as Macrium Reflect Free. If you're interested in that, we can pursue it after the clean install is completed. Regular images would be a good insurance policy against things like virus/malware attacks, and operating system problems (like borked updates). It would prevent you from ever having to clean install again, as it is a snapshot in time of your entire operating system, including all installed programs, which can be restored easily when needed. Keep it in the back of your mind for now.
If you like, you can provide a list of installed programs, and we can have a look to see what preparation may be necessary, just to be sure. To do this easily, download and install
Ccleaner Free, navigate to the following location, export the installed programs list, and post it here.
Yes, sure. They have online accounts for you, and there is no software on your system for those types of accounts, so you're all set there. One question I have is, do you use an email client, or do you collect your email online using your browser?
Yes. Once a system has had Windows 10 installed and activated on it, you can reinstall W10 as often as you like/need. The activation is stored on the MS servers, and the system will be reactivated after it goes online again.
The uninstall is just a matter of deleting all partitions on the drive, so it takes seconds. The clean install will take about as long as it took to upgrade the system - about 1 to 2 hours, depending on your system specs and internet connection speed.
Let's have a look at your installed programs, and see what you need.
The install media for Windows 10 will need to be downloaded and saved to either a DVD disk or USB stick, depending on which you prefer to boot your system from.
Sounds good.
You can have a read of this tutorial to familiarize yourself with the procedure, and please ask questions before we begin.
Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums
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