Asus X55A Laptop - Reset to Factory or Clean Windows Home 7 Install?

Hello All

My friend has an Asus X55A laptop that her son used and abused. It was so loaded with spyware and who knows what else that I had no other choice but to reset it to the factory set-up. Asus allows users to do this by hitting F9 and then following the prompts. For the most part the reset worked pretty well but the PC is still a bit sluggish in my opinion. I did remove all the bloat ware I could find by uninstalling the software and turning off the corresponding software in MSConfig.

The laptop only has 2GB of memory and a Celeron processor and it is running Windows 7 Home Premium, 64 bit. I do not have the actual recovery DVD that can be purchased from Asus for $50. The PC might have shipped with the DVD but who knows where it is. I have turned on the Windows Firewall and installed Microsoft Security Essentials as I do not want to do too much until I figure out what the next step is. All of the devices loaded properly in Device Manager and the PC can browse the internet. Sometimes it runs decently and other times it is sluggish as I said.

So here are my ideas and I wanted to get some feedback\advice.

If I could get a DVD with Windows 7 Home Premium, could I install Windows from the DVD and then use the Windows 7 Product key which is printed on the bottom of the laptop to activate Windows? My thinking on this is to do a clean install to wipe out any type of spyware or virus that survived the factory reset. I will have to install the drivers that Windows cannot figure out but that is no big deal. Asus confirmed that a factory reset should wipe out the spyware unless the spyware leaked into the partition that has the reset data. Will Microsoft allow this as I have an OEM version of Windows vs. a full retail version.

The other option is to purchase the $50 CD from Asus. I really do not see what this will do as it is probably the same thing as running the factory reset by hitting F9. Right?

Lastly, is the fact that this PC only has 2Gb of RAM what is causing the sluggishness? When I look at Task Manager, the RAM usage is 70% which is very high.

Thanks, Bill

Thanks, bill

Thrash,

Thanks for the reply. Ok so you are suggesting that I upgrade the RAM. I would think that 4GB would suffice. Not sure why Asus thought 2GB would work. Guess ASUS was trying to hit a certain price point. The second part of my question has to do with the Windows install. I thought that the product code was tied to a specific Windows 7 product which for this PC is Windows Home Premium. If I can find a Windows 7 Premium Home DVD (not Asus $50 DVD) and I install Windows on the machine by doing a clean install, are you saying that I can use the product code on the machine to activate? That way I avoid the bloat ware altogether. Thx

Thanks Thrash. I took a Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium Disk and installed it on the laptop. I used the OEM key to activate and it worked so all is well.