Installing / re-installing Windows

 Microsoft have made clear that, in future, when something goes wrong with your Windows installation that you can't easily resolve (even with solid advice from wherever), from a technical perspective, "the easiest thing" is often  to rebuild Windows and re-install your products.

Certainly, this is something advocated by most IT technicians when you are hit by malware or virus, since, like "nuking from orbit", it's the only way to be sure.  

Indeed, in the corporate world already, there's a limit to how much time a technician might be permitted to spend on your otherwise trusty Desktop/Laptop before it moves into "too expensive" in man-hours, and the nuke button is pressed.

For many of at home, this can be an alarming prospect. 

Indeed, for some, you may just as well be asking them to perform open-heart surgery on themselves, such is the level of "daunting" it appears to them.

And, of course, people become used to how they have their stuff setup and how it's all arranged … change is something most people seek to avoid when it comes to IT.

But it's not all bad news, as, these days, with Windows10 and above, you can be installed with latest Build/Version from scratch in around an hour, thankfully, long gone are the days when it was sometimes well over half a day to complete. 

In around 90 minutes to two hours, I have regularly setup "turnkey" machines for Customers from scratch, ready-to-go with their Office suite installed and Outlook mailbox connected, with various software similarly installed and pre-configured so the machine's User can just login and get on with their role upon receipt.

Let's take a look at how a build/rebuild works.

You will need an 8GB+ USB bootable thumbdrive (aka flashdrive) for the install media. 

During the process, the contents of this drive will be wiped if it was not specifically purchased for the task, so transfer any stuff on it that you want to keep, to elsewhere.

Obviously, your existing hard drive will be wiped also, so any documents, images, music or videos and so forth you have on there, you'll need to backup elsewhere, whether copied to another USB drive or uploaded to OneDrive/GDrive etc.

Make sure you have keys for any apps installed via CD/DVD, if not, set about finding them whilst you still can.

If you have things like CD/DVD-installed game saves, Google your game and see if the configuration and saves can be backed-up or copied (this is not necessary with streamed games, such as those via Steam, Origin, BattleNet, etc).

Do not try to copy any C:\ProgramFiles\ or C:\Windows folders from old to new build, that simply won't work, you'll need to re-install apps and games again, there's no way around that.

In fact, copying anything system-related from old build to new will likely break the new, including from your Profile (your login/username under C:\Users), such as AppData content.

If your primary (or single) physical hard drive is partitioned into (eg) C: and D: drives, note that D: will also be wiped, so backup your stuff (to elsewhere) from here too.

If your D: drive is a second physical drive, and you have installed apps/games to it, I recommend you uninstall them before starting the rebuild, and delete any orphaned files and folders. This both recovers space on the drive, and ensures no orphaned files pollute/corrupt the new install of it/them, should you point the installers at D: again.

Now you have everything backed up, go to https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10 

This would also be your starting point if this is a new build, such as after fitting a new SSD or other drive.

Go to the section "Create Windows 10 installation media" and download the offered tool.

Launch, and accept the Licensing.

Select "create installation media (USB flash drive or DVD) for another PC"

Use the Recommended Options For This PC (tick box)

Point to the target media (your USB thumbdrive) and it should create a bootable USB with the latest version of Win10 install media.

If you do have a second physical hard drive for D:, you will want to disconnect it to avoid any confusion and consequent shoot-self-in-foot data loss;  just disconnect either the power or SATA cable to it, that will be sufficient, you can check you have disconnected the correct drive by powering up again - if it launches Windows, it was the wrong drive !

Once happy, with your computer powered off, disconnect your ethernet cable and any peripherals  such as printers, you really just want mouse & keyboard connected.

Insert the newly created USB and power on the PC.

Your PC should automatically see the USB and boot from it, if not, you may have to change the boot sequence in your computer's BIOS so the USB is first to be selected. 

You want to select performing a New Installation. 

When you get the opportunity during the process, delete all existing partitions, even ones that might say Recovery, so that you just have one, unformatted, partition … this part is especially important if the rebuild activity has been triggered because of any form of Malware/Virus/Ransomware.

At some point during setup, it will ask you to connect to network, such as wifi…follow the option "I don't have/Ask Me Later".

One of the principle reasons for disconnecting ethernet/wifi is that during install, you'll be encouraged to use a Microsoft email account as the builder/admin/user of the PC.

I strongly recommend you don't, and instead, build with what's called a LOCAL account, because should that email account ever be lost (password forgotten / hacked / yada), you will lose all Administrative access to the machine, or worse, any access at all, with no recovery option except another rebuild.  

And if you have no current backups of whatever was on there at the time, it's potentially all gone.

So, when it asks for the Microsoft account, select "I don't have these details" and on the next screen should be "Create Local Account" (though it may appear as a small, blue, link underneath the "preferred" selections offered).

Don't be tempted to create the build with your own login initially; instead, create this local account named admin.local, or similar,  so you know it's for that, and give it a suitable (and of course, strong) password.

Once the setup is done, add your own local account "Fred" (or whatever) via System Settings >Accounts, and give "Fred"  Administrative access.

Now restart, log in as Fred, hookup your ethernet or connect wifi and make sure you have internet etc., and complete your setup, including checking for Windows Updates.

The admin.local account also means that if anything goes wrong with your "Fred" login, you can always reset it's password or even create another profile if needed.

At this stage, you can shut the PC down and reconnect that second physical drive, if you have one, and your peripherals.

For good order, make the first app you install a minimum of MalwareBytes if you don't have a subscription AntiVirus product, and immediately scan the second physical drive.

Now proceed with your other app and game installs, connecting peripherals and restoring your stuff.

Now is also the time to setup Backup regimes (see my article on the subject).