in the end its up to his mother though
she has to use it
and if she is more comfortable using windows let her

True. But when it comes to internet there is almost no difference. Best thing is it comes with everything installed and fully upgraded. All you need to do is click firefox and then rest is exactly the same.

Thanks but whenever something is even the least bit different in my parents computer I get a call from them, I don't look forward to the headache. I don't doubt it's good, I myself would switch to Linux if it wasn't for games, and having to dual boot, etc.

Only tip i can give is partition disk to two different partition. C and D. After installation (which is piece of cake), you can move the most used folders like pictures or songs to drive D. That way, if you need to format the computer later again, you wont have to worry about important files.

Also, you may store some of the latest drivers in a folder in that drive D so you wont have to look for them later again incase something happens to the computer. Drivers can be a pain in the butt. Especially network, sound and video drivers.


Goodluck.

use a usb stick instead and keep it always plugged in
much easier

wtf? i have a USB stick for years and i always keep it on this table in front of me along with keys, cell phone etc. grow a brain fuck ass.. if you dumb don't expect others to be just like you

true but i dont want to insult OP's parents here but from my experience parents are remarkably dim when it comes to pc's
keep it simple
keep it plain
nothing fancy
what works works

my mother has been using computers for a decade now and she is still out of her depth with anything more complicated then basic surfing

label the usb stick clearly and keep it either save or plugged it at all times and nothing will go wrong

Formatting probably isn't what you need for this. I've "fixed" slow computers a bunch of times for work and family, and formatting rarely fixes the problem, though if you've got additional knowledge of why you want to format, then by all means, have at it.

If her computer is running slowly, and she's got antivirus running, then it's most likely a case of a bunch of background processes eating your CPU or RAM. Bring up Task Manager and see; if there are a few obvious culprits, fix them directly; usually, that means uninstalling(and perhaps reinstalling) them. If you know how to inspect a registry, even better. Check your hives for failed installs that keep trying - and failing - to run. I just had to clean about 1,000 entries for a family computer because they had four duplicate hives trying to install a software suite, simultaneously. Made things horribly slow.

If you think that you've got some sort of malware, then formatting still isn't the best option, because a format doesn't actually wipe the information, so you can (and I've seen this several times) format a computer, do a fresh install, and if everything is pretty much the same, you can still have the malware resident on your computer. There are parts of your hard drive that a normal format doesn't erase, and even erased data on a disk is still there until it's overwritten...

...which brings me to my third advice, which is find and use a zero-fill tool if you really want to wipe everything away and start from scratch. It's the "nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure" approach, and is rarely the best fix, but it is also pretty easy. I like DBAN myself, but it's hardly the only option out there. Doing this takes some time, but if you want to get rid of a computer that once had useful personal information on it, and also don't want to smash the hard drive with a hydraulic press, it's a wise step to take.

I totally agree with you. That is why I developed this system. I have been IT manager for 15 years and in over 25 years i installed more than 10 thousand computers. Half of my life was on phone with others explaining stuff.

With keeping important files at Drive D, the user wont be effected at all. She will still see the exact things she always sees and does. Only thing is, when she saves a picture to picture folder, it will save it to D instead of usual C. She wont even know that. And ofcourse there is definetly no downside of keeping your drivers at drive D. Always keep things where they belong.

Thanks for posting such an indepth answer. I really couldn't find anything, and she's not one to install anything else on her PC. The only taxing thing was Skype, although she always had that, so it doesn't explain why it would be slower than usual. I might try DBAN.

Do you have any opinions on dealing with multiple partitions and SSDs? Like I said in the OP I'd like to format mine as well. I'll be surrendering to the cosmic horror that is Windows 10 soon, and I'd prefer if it was a clean install.

EDIT: I just noticed she's getting some crazy usage out of her hard drive, up to 100%, yet the task manager doesn't show any program using even a tenth of that.

You've gotten good advice from others here about multiple partitions. I wouldn't, personally, use a computer that only had one partition unless I had a specific requirement to do so. Keeping things, as Engerek says above, where they belong, is good practice. Even better if you can afford to buy a cheap second physical hard drive, imo.

SSDs are good technology. There's no pressing need (at a normal consumer level) to treat a modern SSD any differently than a magnetic drive; it's all just storage. If you're going to go to Win10 and want a clean install, I'd say if you can afford it, throw your O/S on one partition of your SSD, your programs that you need to start up quickly on a second partition. Put your recovery info on one partition of a second (preferably larger, and possibly magnetic because price) physical drive, and throw your media on the main partition of that second physical drive. That way you've got the fast load times of the SSD for the stuff you need to use, and your recovery and backup information on an entirely different physical drive. If you can't afford the price or hassle of getting another physical drive, then at least, as you've been advised by others here, put your recovery on a separate partition. That way if you ever need to format your drive again, you can format just the selected partition.

Incidentally, if you are going to go with O/S on one physical disk and media on another - for reliability concerns - you might even want to consider moving your swap space (page file) to your second drive, if you want to keep read/write load off your main drive. Your choice. I'm a network nerd, not a desktop support nerd, so it's always possible I'm not keeping up with best practices.

EDIT: Well, keep in mind that the usage up top of the list is a sum of the pieces below. There are plenty of valid reasons that you could see high HDD usage; antivirus checking files in real-time; Dropbox syncing up fifteen thousand pictures from seven hundred albums shared on Facebook; Windows indexing things like a little OCD Monk. If you really think that you've got too much HDD usage and can't find the culprit, let the computer sit for a few minutes undisturbed, then check back. Maybe it just has something Really Really Important And It's a Secret but it'll be done in a minute ;)

Thanks. I actually misspoke in my post and meant multiple drives, and not partitions, but I was overthinking things and the question I had was already answered.

Still, thanks for the information.

Assuming it's a modern version of windows (i.e. 8/8.1 or 10) then I would just use the built in reset options rather than doing a full disk format and reinstall.