Many thanks. I have a laptop that runs XP.
Yikes! That's a pretty dangerous way to run. XP is past the end of its life, so it isn't going to get patches for security issues.
Unfortunately it is protected by disk encryption software and I don't have the password.
That...doesn't make a lot of sense. If the disk is encrypted, how can you access it at all without the password? Is this some sort of proprietary thing?
It is so slow that it is near useless.
When people tell me their Windows XP systems are slow, I usually assume that they're riddled with malware. Windows has gotten a lot better about security, but some of it is a result of what you intentionally install on the PC, which only improves by changing your practices.
Is it possibe to wipe the OS and leave the other stuff there and replace with Linux?
It should be possible to wipe everything and install Linux, regardless of software disk encryption. If you're running XP now, you probably have a fairly old, likely 32-bit computer, so make sure to get the 32-bit version of whatever OS you go with. I use Ubuntu, generally like it. Make sure you backup anything files you don't want to lose first, because wiping the hard drive will delete everything.
As Delmar mentioned, you could also dual-boot with Windows, but this is more complex, and if you are having problems with XP anyway (and you really should stop using that version of Windows), it seems not really worth it to me. Alternatively, you could go get a newer version of Windows. If you're looking to keep a large portion of the experience, and run a lot of the same software, that's probably closer to what you want. But, you'll have to pay for it, and it honestly might be more reasonable to get a new computer at that point. Generally, I think Microsoft did a pretty respectable job with Windows 10.
