WRT my broken Laptop am I best to do a clean boot or restore to factory settings?

[Katymac]

It will boot in safe mode but won't system restore - where do I go from here

I am looking for the system discs.....but I put them in a safe place which is always fatal

BUMP

I've rebuilt several machines from a completely clean disk and while it's possible it is a bit fiddly.

I've always had another machine with me when I've done this so that I can get the networking drivers and anti-virus sorted out on the clean machine before it's connected to the internet.

If you can restore to "factory settings" then that will be easier.

However if you're up for a bit of work then doing a clean build can give you a faster machine as it won't be filled up with all the rubbish that manufacturers often load up for you.