I want to do a clean install on my notebook, a Sony Vaio Pro with windows 8.1. It's running pretty slow (even browsers are jerky, where once they were really smooth) and a weird network issue where it will lose my home network and refuse to reconnect until its rebooted. I could try and deal with these issues individually, but I've always liked a nice clean install and am happy to do it. I was hoping to hold out until the Windows 10 consumer preview was available, but can't take the jerkiness any longer.

As seems to be the case for most new notebooks, it didn't come with recovery disks. Nor is there a licence key sticker on the machine ("injected" into the motherboard?). It seems to have a recovery partition and wants me to make my own recovery disks. I never got around to this when I first bought the machine (didn't have a big enough flash drive or external cd writer), so am doing it now.

My question is what will the recovery media actually do? Will it install a clean version of Windows 8.1, or will it be a factory restore (i.e. with the Sony stuff included too)? Or will it just restore my PC to the state it was in when I made the recovery media? I'd prefer a clean install and being able to pick what is installed and what is not. Some of the less useful stuff that I never use (I didn't say bloatware) can immediately go.

Related to this, if/when I go with Windows 10, is there any way of doing a clean install and keeping some of the programs included with the PC? It came with a copy of Photoshop Elements that I'd kind of like to keep (although I know GIMP is a pretty good alternative).

I do have a spare Windows 8 licence key and install disk somewhere too. Am I better off using that for a clean install and just writing off the recovery media altogether?