I'm setting up a laptop so that mum can use the internet at her partner's house, but it's a fairly old laptop that takes ages to do anything and this is my second try at installing the OS after it got mucked up the first time and wouldn't boot.
All you need to do is disk cleanup, disk error check and defragment the computer.... I barely rely on microsoft tools, they don't exactly do tasks like you want it to.
If you want, you can upgrade your laptop's RAM, gives it extra speed. 
I was installing Windows 7 over a previous installation of Ubuntu and Windows got messed up during the activation process, so disk cleanup, error check and defragmentation wouldn't have helped. I tried recovering Windows using a utility on the installation CD, but it just churned away without making any apparent progress, and I decided it would probably be quicker to reinstall. It's up and running now (more of a limping walk than a run), but the sound isn't working, so I'm sure I'll have a fun time today tracking down some drivers for it. The laptop's too old to be worth upgrading; it's just a spare that was lying around, and it's good enough for basic internet use.
