Is there a preparation guide for those about to do a reset?

So things are getting worse almost every day. Upgrading to Win 10 feels like a train wreck that left the passengers in critical condition and are now dying off one at a time. On top of my previous issues, I now have also lost functionality of the mail app, Word, Chromecast, and more. Startup time ranges between 25 and 45 minutes (yes, minutes, not seconds). Browser hangs for about 5 minutes before it's usable. Sound is acting like it's drunk. My startup optimizer is suddenly showing me entries for internet security suites that were removed months ago (and are now trying to start with windows again). If I let my PC go to sleep I'm ensuring it will freeze up within seconds of waking it. All restore points vanish after system restart. I could go on.

Since all methods to repair have failed, I'm left with the dreaded option of a reset. The problem is that it seems like a daunting task that will require copious amounts of work. I have a general idea of what to do (and I have the guides here to know how to do it properly), but I was wondering if there are any tips, or pointers about things I might not be necessarily prepared for. For example, I'm planning on listing all software I'll need to download and activate again, and I'll try to recover the usernames/passwords prior to reset so they're handy later. I'm somewhat worried about info stored in my browser because I've come to rely very heavily on the autocomplete password feature. Other than that it's my understanding I won't lose personal files (pictures, files, movies, music, etc.) unless I chose the "remove" option.

Am I on track so far, or do I sound like I already have no clue what I'm doing?

Thanks.

axe0, thank you. Yes, I've tried safe mode. It boots faster . . . much, much faster, but everything else is pretty much the same.

bro67, I've already started that process and I'm storing all of it on an external drive, just for extra precaution. Speaking of which, would the external drives be affected by this? Should I remove them prior to going through with it. I ask because I remember having to install software for them the first time I plugged them in, though I can't remember why (it's been a while).

Also, as I mentioned in a previous post (when I first came here for help) I switched from Legacy to UEFI in a "mangled" sort of way and I remember someone saying that that alone should have prevented Windows from loading at all. It didn't, and it helped fix one of the early problems, but now I'm wondering if it will affect the reset and if so how.

I have two: iolo System Mechanic and Norton 360 (the built in startup optimizers for both). I would use only one, but iolo shows entries that don't show up on 360, and the other way around.

Admittedly my hard drive is pretty old (by computer standards anyway), but it was running perfectly prior to the upgrade without even the slightest hiccup for years. Everything started the day of the upgrade (aside from an internet connection issue in the final weeks which, oddly, was solved when I upgraded to 10 after all other options had failed).

I got iolo because I used Tuneup Utilities for years and I was always getting messages about all the stuff it fixed for me automatically. Before the upgrade I Googled to find what's currently the best and a couple of articles listed iolo (though they both had a caveat that it didn't do anything for internet speed, which I didn't care about anyway). I can't say that I'm entirely happy with it, especially after using it to clean the registry once and the result was a two day nightmare where I couldn't boot the computer, but I like certain features it has. There's one in particular that I can't live without because if I run a resource heavy app or a game the system doesn't seem to revert back to normal when I'm done. So in the Task Manager, for instance, it will list "System and Compressed Memory" as the same as when the game was running. It will stay that way (and everything else will behave as though I'm still running the game), until I run iolo's memory analyzer which the analysis alone seems to finally unload the demand on resources. I don't know why, or how, but this is the kind of cr*p I've been putting up with since upgrading to Win 10.

In any case, I used the System Info tool and updated my system specs as best I could. Let me know if I did something wrong or missed something (I don't know about PSU, Cooling and all that).