Fresh OS install procedure?

[TheExile]

Heya Guys.

When you install an operating system, wether is be on a new rig or a fresh install on an existing pc, do you have a set procedure you follow as far as setup? As in adjusting things and installing programs? I have recently wised up to saving all the utilities that I routinely download for a new build to a USB drive to save time.  If you have a checklist that you follow is it intended for a customer's computer? A gaming rig? Workstation?  Thanks guys.

[NelizMastr]

Basically:

 

- OS install

- Drivers

- Updates

- Nuking Windows 10 bloatware apps

- Ninite + classic shell

- MS Office

 

These steps are universal for all my Win10 installs. I don't really deal with 7 or 8 anymore these days.

[Lurick]

Depends on if I know I'll be doing a clean install or not

99% of the time it's planned for my computer.

I'll have all the drivers ready to go on another drive, get those out of the way after I install the OS, the do the Windows updates, Classic Shell, important programs will be either downloaded and ready ahead of time or kept in a list with the download links. Reload a few dozen times to install everything, then tweak network drivers, install steam and make sure it finds all the games, and then customize the color scheme and take care of the aesthetics. Finally, re-apply the overclock

 

I usually keep drivers that I know work saved off somewhere along with a list of important programs with download links at the very least.

[TheExile]

Thanks Nelize.

I just started on Windows 10 a few weeks ago.  Can you be more specific about Nuking bloatware and ninite + classic shell? I have no idea what your talking about.  

 

 

[NinJake]

Depends, if you're doing this for a company or business where there's a ton of workstations to deploy, just take an image of a sysprepped machine and reimage all the computers. Also have a good group policy set up and let that take care of all the nitty gritty stuff for particular users / departments.

 

For one-off projects such as a friends pc, most of the time these are bought from a store (pre-built) and then plug and play, windows 10 is smart enough to do mostly everything you need to do anyways. There is a lot of bloat indeed as @NelizMastr mentioned which you should remove.

[NinJake]

18 minutes ago, TheExile said:

Thanks Nelize.

I just started on Windows 10 a few weeks ago.  Can you be more specific about Nuking bloatware and ninite + classic shell? I have no idea what your talking about.  

 

 

When you are done initializing the w10 install and are greeted at the desktop. When you open the start menu you'll most likely notice a lot of junk like the Xbox app among other things... candy crush.... minecraft... etc... you'll want to unpin these things from the start menu and go into add/remove programs to uninstall everything  you're able to. If you have Windows 10 education or enterprise editions you'll have much more control over this garbage... however home users and pro users will still have to suffer through it or find some powershell scripts to uninstall this throughout all user profiles. (not recommended without backing up an image first)

 

Also, the classic shell thing is just a user preference. It will change the GUI... I don't use it personally.

[TheExile]

Ah, gotcha.

[LogicalDrm]

I'm going to install Win10 fairly soon. I will also redo most of my software, so its close to fresh install.

1. OS
2. Drivers and Windows updates. I tend to have 4 driver installers running at the same time. They tell me if some doesn't like company when installing.
3. Re-re-re-reboot.
4. Software, more updates
   1. I don't use Ninite because I like to choose where software installs. In past. Now I'm going to have 500gb ssd, so everything will be on C. But I'll still install all manually
   2. Essential stuff. Browsers, Thunderbird, VLC, Bitdefender, Discord, Skype etc.
   3. Less essential stuff and games. With games I will just move them to C. Or rather move those I play most.
5. Settings. I do backup settings if I can. So I will be pasteing those in and redoing settings for rest.

 

Rest of the stuff will come along the way.

[TheExile]

I get a little chuckle everytime I use Internet Explorer to install Chrome and then remove IE.  It's the software equivalent of making it dig its own grave.  

 

How about startup? Do you disable anything in there?