OK, you’ve reinstalled Windows … now what?

Posted on by Fred Langa

What you do immediately after a Windows reinstall is almost as important as the steps you take before and during that process. Your freshly installed OS is only the foundation; the steps taken to finish configuring a system will impact its usability down the road.

Done right, your final PC setup will be stable, conflict-free, and running as well as it possibly can.

Done wrong, you may introduce errors and software conflicts that can reduce stability, drag down overall performance, or create other problems.

If you’ve ever had a post-reinstall moment when you said to yourself, “I wish I’d set this up differently,” you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about!

Through the years, I’ve been there enough times that I eventually developed a post-reinstall checklist to help me stay on the right track and ensure that my rebuilds are as good as I can make them: no steps missed and all software reinstalled in an order that will eliminate — or at least minimize — conflicts.

Over time, I’ve modified that checklist to keep up with the evolution of PCs and Windows. What follows is my current version, generalized so you can easily adapt it to your own specific setup and needs. The details of your post-reinstall setup will differ from mine, but the big strokes should work on virtually any Win10 PC.

This weeks’ AskWoody Plus edition shows you how to get a Win10 reinstallation off on the right foot — solid, fast, glitch-free, and running as well as it possibly can!

Also in this issue:

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Fred Langa

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2 Replies to “OK, you’ve reinstalled Windows … now what?”

  1. To upgrade to W11, replacing the motherboard and CPU are required. The new environment will be on a new M.2 SSD.

    My dilemma, how to end up with clean window 10 on the new hardware and retain the old installed software. I’m concerned about the chip set drivers, etc from the old system. The thought occurred to simply use the SSD clone utility to the new SSD and then do a clean install.

    Migration to Windows 11 will occur only after W10 is running successfully on the new hardware.

    Thank you.

    Fred

    Reply

    1. Here are steps I’ve come up with

      The upgrade will consist of
      • Replace old motherboard with new motherboard
      • Replace old CPU with new CPU
      • Replace old SATA SSD with new M.2 SSD
      • Clean install Windows 10

      Activities involved
      1. Flash BIOS on new motherboard on table using USB and spare PSU
      2. Backup complete system
      3. Copy RAID 0 (mirrored drives) to an external drive (just an additional precaution)
      4. Disconnect all drives on old system except C: with OS
      5. Install M.2 SSD in old system
      6. Clone old system on SATA to new M.2 SSD
      7. Shutdown system, remove old system SATA SSD
      8. Restart running old system on M.2 SSD
      9. Delete old system drivers from M.2
      10. Install drivers for new hardware
      11. Shut down old system
      12. Remove old motherboard
      13. Remove M.2 from old motherboard and install on new
      14. Install M.2 on new motherboard
      15. Install new motherboard in place of old motherboard
      16. Use Windows 10 USB to clean install windows on M.2
      17. Reinstall system drivers, if necessary
      18. Reconnect disk drives.
      19. Configure RAID 0. This is where the backup may be handy.

      Hopefully, when complete, the system is ready.

      Reply

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