Windows 10 Fresh Win 10 install

[floppybootstomp]

Finally got round to a fresh install of Windows 10 mostly to give me a little more space on my C drive.

Purchased a Crucial 500Gb NVME M.2 drive which cost me £75.00 as the Samsung 500Gb NVME M.2 is typically around £110.00.

There’s a lot of good things about Windows 10 but also a lot of irritating features. Examples of these pros and cons are ease of installation and ability to set things up easily, the driver for my pair of Xbox 360 Game controllers/receiver always seemed to hit installation snags with Win 7 but Win 10 made this issue a breeze.

But Win 10 has no respect for privacy. At the start of a typical install there are many options you have to answer no to otherwse you may as well just be an open window to Microsoft. And even if you select no to all MS are still having a good peek at what you’re up to. Win 10 also likes to manage things for you. The irritating Cortana can’t be uninstalled and my Win 10 set the Edge Browser as default and the PDF reader as default printer.

Some items worth noting:

If you want to activate the ‘hidden’ Win 10 Administrator account the original install must have a user log-in password (Win 10 allows users not to have a password).

To install games within Galaxy/GoG Game client Direct Play must be enabled (See install list below for details).

All Win 10 updates must be applied to give final current latest Version and build of OS, without this if you’re using an Nvidia Graphics card Nvidia graphics drivers will not install.

I have a fast internet connection and the Win 10 updates took around 3 hours to download and install. The first time I tried this I thought the system had froze as it was stuck at one point for around 40 minutes. So I started again which was a mistake. Just let Microsoft get on with it, best to walk away then revisit machine a few hours later.

I backed up all my Pictures; My Documents; Users/Favourites & Saved Games; All AppData folders: Local, LocalLow & Roaming – this preserved most game saves and of course many games in all 4 games Clients (Steam, Origin/EA/Uplay/Ubisoft, Galaxy/GoG) have cloud saves so I didn’t lose many saves.

Most of my data is stored on a seperate hard disk from the disk containing the OS so that wasn’t a problem.

All seems to be chugging along nicely right now, a fresh Win 10 install is a lengthy process but imo sometimes it’s good to engineer a refresher.

Below is my personal list of the install sequence, hopefully it may be of assistance to other members.


Win 10 OS (Note: To set Admin log-in original Win 10 install needs to have password)
Classic Shell
Check Storage and Games HDDs have original drive letters and reset if necessary
LAN Drivers
In Control/Panel/System check Win 10 has been activated, if not manually activate.
Sound card drivers Asus Xonar DGX (use custom Uni driver)
Folder Options – Single click/View all file extensions
UAC Settings
Power options – disable all energy settings/screen saver
Internet Explorer 11 (Start/Windows Accessories/Internet Explorer/Right click & pin to taskbar). Make default.
IE Favourites
Install all Win 10 updates
Video Drivers (GeForce Experience software) (Need to update Win 10 prior to install)
Printer drivers/wireless setup
K-Lite Codec pack/Classic Media Player (Latest version as at 27th Feb 2019 is V1475)
Leawo Bluray/DVD player / Java
Foobar Audio Player/CD Burner add-on
Sony Camera software (Play memories & RAW Driver)
7-Zip
Foxit PDF reader
Speccy
dbPowerAmp (Newer version)
Audacity audio editing software
Mozilla Thunderbird Email client software – set up 4 x email accounts
Privazer
Avery Design and Print label software
Libre Office
Xbox 360 game controller drivers
Adobe Photoshop CS5
Acronis True Image Hard disk backup software
Nero V12
Adobe Lightroom
Steam Game client
Galaxy/GoG Game client (Note: To enable GoG Games Direct Play must be enabled):
(Direct Play: Control Panel/Programs & Features/ Turn Windows Features On or Off/Legacy Components/Tick Direct Play/Reboot)
Uplay/Ubisoft Game client
Origin/EA Game Client
Opera Browser
A3 Scanner driver
Anti Virus software (One of the free options or use Win 10 built-in)
Samsung SSD M.2 erase 'Magician' software if needed

Motherboard is MSI Z370-A Pro Version 1 Bios 2.20 Coffee Lake Chipset (MS-7B48) (U3E1)

Original M.2 NVME is Samsung 960 EVO 250Gb (232Gb)

Final build was Version 1803 Build 17134.556

E Drive 4Tb (3.63Tb) = Games; F Drive 2Tb (1.81Tb) = Storage

 

[Abraham Andres Luna]

I decided to do a fresh install on my laptop cause I noticed that Dell kept installing new background apps and services without my permission. It was eating up my processor and RAM. Now my machine soldiers along nicely

 

[floppybootstomp]

Worth mentioning.... This fresh install left me with a surplus M.2 NVME 250Gb drive and as my other 2 machines don't have a slot for these drives (one motherboard is too old, the other motherboard too cheap) I wasn't sure what to do with it.

I didn't think it was worth selling as I wouldn't get much for it so decided to seek a way to use it for storage. However this drive was used the carrying medium for it had to be specifically for NVME drives which narrowed down options and also made for a more expensive solution.

Eventually settled for a holder that fitted a PCIe slot which cost £16, mounted the drive and plonked it in my main computer. Booted up and the machine promptly booted into the old Win 10 install on the old drive. I had to change the boot sequence in the BIOS to boot from my new drive which interestingly is seen as a 'UEFI USB Hard Drive' in the BIOS.

Odd that the computer would switch to the drive mounted in a PCIe slot to boot from by itself.

I wanted to completely erase the old drive so went looking around on the big wide world web and found that M.2 SSD drives don't store bytes the same way mechanical SATA drives do and that wiping them with old style software such as Daryns Boot n Nuke could actually shorten their life. I also read that a normal format within Windows is often all that's needed for SSD drives which makes it impossible for data recovery software to retrieve any former information stored on the drive.

However, I eventually used some Samsung Software named 'Magician' to erase my old drive which required the making of a bootable USB drive using the Magician software. This USB drive is then booted from, the drive you want to erase selected and then the erase process starts. My Samsung 250Gb took about 20 minutes to erase.

After that the drive wasn't seen by Win 10, I had to open Computer Management/Disk Management then initialise and format the drive there.

All this kerfuffle and sixteen quid gave me just 232Gb of storage space, bit of a waste of a drive really, they're only really useful to have an OS on imo.

Still, waste not want not, here it is:

 

[floppybootstomp]

Which tool you used to reinstall Windows? directly install or burn the iso file on USB first?

Downloaded MS Win 10 from MS site and burnt to blank DVD.

Booted from DVD and installed.