Help with a unusable computer

[SuxoR]

Hey guys my girlfriend bought a computer about a year ago and it's a pretty decent machine, until her older brother decided it was "his" responsibility.

So he password protected it and nothing can be installed or updated and now the computer is very slow and freezes when you open pictures. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do? I thought about just resetting the password but I don't want her brother to get all mad at her and take it away.

Would it be wise to dual boot another OS on it? She just wants music, photos and the internet so any Linux distro should work.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

btw she might get a laptop but we don't know when so this will be temporary :]

Edit**
Unbuntu looks really attractive and easy for her to get the hang of, is dual booting an option? Can I use GParted and partition the hard drive?

 

[SuxoR]

Thank you Computer Newbie I think I'm going to try it out (just DL'd Unbuntu)

Any more suggestion are appreciated as well

 

[Asylum]

A reformat would be your best bet to get it back to running like it should!!

 

[SuxoR]

Hmm I was thinking about a reformat but they have a lot of pictures and videos they want

How can I reformat without the original windows cd?

 

[kmote]

You should keep your data on a separate partition if not a separate drive and back up to a removable media regularly. This means that when it comes time to reformat, you don't have to worry about your data being destroyed. Password protecting the computer sounds like a good idea to me.
Backup the data over the network or to DVD or whatever. You can use the linux live cd for this if needed, then either troubleshoot the issues or install the linux distro. Even though I don't like it Ubuntu would be fine for both functions.

 

[SuxoR]

Hmm seems I cannot select which partition I can install on...

Haven't tried it on her computer but on my laptop I have to manually install it on a partition :/

Says I haven't defined a root or something

 

[kmote]

You need a partition mounted on /

 

[carnageX]

That's because you installed it from within Windows... SuxoR is trying to install directly off of the CD.

Assuming the computer has XP: How to dual boot Windows XP and Linux (XP installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots

for Vista:
How to dual-boot Vista with Linux (Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots