My elderly neighbour came round with her laptop and asked me to 'fix it'. She thinks I know about computers because I once sorted out a Word document for her...

So it's a pretty old looking netbook - has a sticker saying 'Designed for Windows XP' but is running Windows 7, atom and 1gb ram. It was basically running so slowly as to be unusable. So I installed updates, followed 'cleaning' routines etc (just looked at LifeHacker basically and followed instructions).

It is a bit better as a result, just about usable now but still really slow. Next logical step seems to be reinstall Windows 7 but as it is a Netbook I'm guessing Win just came preinstalled. So is there anyway of legally getting a copy of Win 7 to try a reinstall?

What I assume is the hard drive makes a constant grinding noise so I'm guessing is degraded to point where it may just give out at any time. So maybe not worth it anyway?

So legal Win 7 download for free possible? Any other advice?

Cheers computer people