[Paul33]

I reclaimed the recovery partition but I couldn't touch the "OEM" partition as it stated I wasn't allowed to format it. As a result, I've installed Windows 7 on the biggest chunk of the C: drive - should I have created a new partition (if so, how) ?

The netbook was running very fast after installation but my daughter has now put her 70GB of images/video back into her "My documents" folder and it has mysteriously slowed the machine down again (albeit she has also installed Flash and Windows Live).

Have I done something stupid here ?

[rrfranczak3]

no, what you did is fine.....how much RAM is in the system?...1gb or 2gb, if it is 1gb upgrading it to 2gb will speed it up considerably...if it is already 2gb then there is very little you can do so increase the speed, other than maybe installing a 7200rpm hard drive, the stock drive you have is a 5400rpm, you can also replace the hard drive with an SSD (solid state drive) drive which are very much faster than a traditional spinning hard drive, but in my personal opinion are much more prone to failure than a regular hard drive, some people swear by SSD's, but I am not one of them (lol).....thats about it

BTW: the SSD's tend to be pretty pricey also