doing aWin-7 system repair on the old netbook

May I borrow your time machine when you are done with it?

about an hour ago it mentioned that "this could take a few minutes"

Yeah. It could.

OK, 1.5H later I get the message that Windosw-system-repair isn't able to fix the problem. Now it doesn't even boot up to the login screen . . . .

Trying another way to kick windows

3 tries. Then it's Linux

It's on linux now. It feels faster. But 5% improvement over intolerably slow is still to slow for work

Good for you; it's still a perfectly good computer-o-matic machine