How To Set Up A Windows Computer

Doing a fresh install of Windows and all the applications can be a long drawn out process if you don't have a clone that has the updates and applications installed on it already.

Sometimes, you just gotta do it old school to get rid of viruses, old applications, junk, fragmentation, super slowness, etc.

The prep work
When Windows is installed on a new computer, it likely won't have the drivers to use the hardware, so don't expect anything to work like the WiFi, Ethernet port, a good resolution video display (it may be super low resolution), the USB 3.0 ports may not work (USB 1.0 and maybe 2.0 may work and the CD/DVD drive may work).

So how do you connect to the Internet to download updates? Seems like a catch 22. You need to connect to the Internet to download the updates that allow you to connect to the Internet.

I've found that laptops with SD card readers tend to read SD cards. So before I wipe the computer, I go to the manufacturer website for the model number of a particular computer, such as www.hp.com and then the support tab, and then I type in the model number found on a sticker on the bottom or back of the computer. It then takes you to the download page for that model, like this one for one of the Samsung Series 7 model NP700Z5B-S01UB (found on the bottom of the laptop) where you will want to download, Usually under drivers, or download tab, at very least, the correct wireless and LAN drivers (device manager on the computer you will be installing it on will tell you the brand-Intel or Broadcom), maybe the video card driver. You can download more, but those will get you Internet connectivity. I recommend downloading updates via the Ethernet instead of wifi, it's generally faster, especially on older computers.

Install Windows
Put your Windows CD in, some computers will allow you to use a formatted USB with a copy of Windows on a flash drive, or from a network (which is more complicated). It takes several minutes to start up, then you have options to format the existing drives, leave any recovery partitions in, or format them too. At the very least, if you want to wipe it, format the largest drive, as tht has all the files and old OS on it. If you want to try keeping your old files and reinstalling an OS over the existing OS, don't format the drive and just install Windows over the existing partition that has your files. Your files will most likely be ok.

If there is a recovery partition for the same OS, you can probably leave it. If you want to start from scratch scratch or are going to change operating systems, then maybe format all the drives, merge them into one big drive, and do a fresh install and see if a recovery partition is created. If you ave the disk, a recovery partition may not be needed... if you keep the disk available. It should usually be fine without a recovery partition.

Recovery Partition
This is one area most people overlook, but I am bookmarking to come back to when I learn more about it. My understanding right now is that an OEM System Recovery Media OS won't create a recovery partition, but a true installation disk will, so when you press F4, you would be able to repair Windows without a disk if you use a true install disk. That's my guess. I manually format the drive with all the info and operating system when installing a fresh install of and leave the recovery partition alone if there was one from a previous install when I use the OEM disk.

Windows is installed (and it is ugly)
It may not look pretty because you don't have your display drivers installed, so it on a super low res setting and it may not connect to the Internet (you can try an Ethernet cable and turning on wifi, just make sure any buttons on the computer, like touch buttons that are red are turned blue, or switches turned off to on). This is where you take the SD card (formatted as Fat32 or even ExFAT-no 4GB max file size- for Windows Vista and newer) and slide it in. The computer should recognize it. You can now double click on the drivers you installed for the LAN for Ethernet, Wifi, and display, and anything else. If the SD card doesn't work, see if it recognized a USB 2.0 stick (a USB 3.0 stick may require drivers). If that doesn't work, see if  a CD can be read. you may have to use another computer to copy or burn those network drivers to the USB 2.0 or CD.

Once the Ethernet or WiFi are connected, preferably LAN since it is generally faster, you can download any additional software or drivers from the support page for your model. So go again to ww.hp.com, ww.dell.com, www.samsung.com, for whatever brand you have, support tab, enter your model number, and finish downloading the things you need, chipset, Bios, USB, etc. Think twice about software packages. Some are good, most are junk. Read descriptions.

This can take 20 minutes to an hour depending on how many drivers there are.

Microsoft updates
Control Panel-Security-view and install Windows Updates-review updates ...1033 is the Windows 7 genuine notification. You can manually select what updates you want and right click on it and hide it if you think it will cause problems. Install these updates.

Installing these updates is a good start and will patch a lot of security holes. Expect it to take about 2-4 hours and restart 2-3 times, so you need to babysit it. Updates generally install faster when you connect via Ethernet instead of wifi. Yes, it is painful, so update a lot of computers at once, or watch TV.

Anti-virus
AVG Free or Avast Free are good choices.
Avast may require your e-mail to register for it every 365 days.
AVG works fine, but you have to put it on silent mode otherwise you can get annoying pop ups reminding you it's been updated. AVG can be temporarily disabled for a few minutes or until a restart if need be.
Don't forget to manually update them and not sign up for the paid versions, which are good too but go on sale for free sometimes at computer stores every year with rebates.

Anti-Spyware
Sometimes I install it, sometimes I don't.
Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes are popular.
Spybot Search and Destroy Free has a nice immunization feature. But it also is known for giveing several false positives, which can be annoying. The Tea Timer add-on can be tricky to use with registry backups or something, so I don't install it. Spybot thought 7Zip was spyware in 2009 if I remember right.*SpyBot  will let you speed up scans by creating a whitelist of everything currently on your computer. It is probably safer to not have a whitelist, but hey, time is money too.

Browsers
Internet Explorer comes stock, but I don't like it's lack of a multi row tab bar, lack of bookmark extensions, and lack of AdBlock Plus support. It is also the most targeted in attacks, and probably the least secure browser since it is the most mainstream. So everyone else, especially businesses that have money, keep using it so hackers concentrate on IE only and leave Chrome and Firefox alone.

Chrome Good because flash player is pre-installed unlike other web browsers, so you can watch YouTube immediately. Bad because it seems to crash on me more often than any other browser when I have a lot of tabs and do video at the same time.

Firefox Firefox is an oldie, but goodie. But you have to install Adobe Reader, Flash, and Shockwave manually, as you do with Internet Explorer.

--Firefox Extensions
I recommend Tab Mix Plus for multi row tab support (I am a tab whore and use 3 rows at 66 pixels per tab-adjusted in Preferences-Tab Bar to change 'scrolling' to 'multi row' and 'Tab' to reduce min tab width if you need to scrunch more in there),
SoThink Web Video downloader (if you need to download a protected video, like from a news station)
Delicious bookmarks (may be an outdated bookmark bar, but hey)
Abduction - lets you capture high quality .png or low quality .jpg of Entire webpages (even the parts you have to scroll down to see). Another option is to save the page as a .pdf, but that may not be what you want to do.
Greasemonkey-some websites have scripts that require greasemonkey to run. There are some fun techy things you can do with scripts, like adding a button to YouTube to download videos, but generally not needed for the casual user.
Noia 4 Theme manager-It changes the look of Firefox and makes it "cooler"

Safai, Opera, and Chrome Canary are also web browsers if you want one for each e-mail address you have.

Now you can install Adblock plus for Firefox and Adblock Plus for Chrome. After they are installed, on the page that pops up on the browser restart, you can also opt in for Malware blocking and anything else that looks good.

Now you can install Adobe Reader, Adobe Shockwave, and Adobe Flash. Don't install Norton Security scanner, Lightroom trial, etc that they try to package along with those.

You may want to set up a System Restore point once you got everything working.

Applications
7zip (Free alternative to WinZip that opens and compresses.zip files)

Office
Microsoft Office
LibreOffice and OpenOffice (free alternatives-Have to change default save settings to be .doc and .xls)
Adobe Acrobat Pro (Lets you edit .PDF docs)

Creative
Adobe CS5/CS6 maybe if you need that stuff (Gimp is a free photoshop alternative)
Audacity (Free audio recording)

DJ
Traktor Pro 2
Atomix VirtualDJ Pro 7
Mixx (free)
Virtual DJ (free)

Video Editing
Sony Vegas Pro
Final Cut Pro for Windows
Adobe Premier Pro
Avid Media Composer
Windows Movie Maker (free)

Backup
Gotta work more on this. I haven't cloned a Windows disk yet. Here are some recommended ones to try.
DriveImage XML is free.
Acronis has good reviews.

The free built in Windows Backup saves your documents and files to a hard drive and lets you copy them to another computer. Doesn't save your applications though.
Seagate Backup saves files similarly as well.

Pictures
Picasa (I don't like it as much as iPhoto, but there is no iPhoto for Windows, but it's free and stores everything, and automatically can back up mid-res pics to you gmail account. You have to tell it not to upload full res pics because it will count against your free storage. Lets you do minor editing as well.)

Media Playback
iTunes (set import to .mp3 instead of .aac)
Windows Media player (set import to .mp3 instead of .wma - better with videos than iTunes IMO)
VLC (plays almost every format of audio and video. You may want to change it to the dark skin. no media library.)

Geek stuff (most people don't need this)
Belarc Advisor - Gives you some tech specs and application info. I did notice that it truncated the last digit of my computer's serial number on a Samsung but not on a shorter HP serial. It would be nice if it gave you the rotational speed of the hard drive and the MHz of the RAM. It tells you the Bus Clock of the main circuit board though.
Geekbench 3 - Tells you how fast your processor speed is on the computer and compares it to other computers. Yeah, you can go to the geekbench results browser and search for your computer there, but it is more fun, though it takes more time, to run it yourself, and compare it to other computers you have run it on that are saved in your free profile. It is kind of cool to say a computer is 4 times more powerful than another. It outputs a single processor speed and all processors together speed. The higher the better. I generally am scared of computers under a total score of 3500 because they will likely slow down and kill your patience in a few months.

You can type in your computer's processor or the model number and find out how it compares to other computers here. 3500+ is safe for regular use. 8000+ is achieved with quad core processors and is good for power users.

Notes
After running updates, anti-virus scans, and anti-malware scans, I remembered why I switched to Macs; They take way less time to update. Hours and hours less. That's because they aren't used by businesses as often and are not as financially capable targets. So let's keep it that way and not introduce Macs into the work environment so we can spend less time updating things at home. Or we could introduce them and demand Apple make them insanely secure with the money they are getting with their higher profit margins per unit.