Installing A Windows Desktop
Pre-Setup
BIOS Time Set To UTC vs Local Time
Windows Vista and 7 have support for setting the time to UTC, but default to local time out of the box. Windows 8 may detect if the BIOS time is in UTC or local time.
There are still a couple of bugs as noted below, but the trade-off may be worth it to you. Every other OS expects the clock to be set to UTC.
- Windows will not sync to time servers if told that the BIOS clock is UTC.
- Windows may hang if running during the switch to and away from DST if told that the BIOS clock is UTC.
If you are unsure of how UTC relates to your time zone, you can use Google to query UTC time.
Partitioning
Please read Drive Partitioning first as it contains a lot of good information.
Since Windows Vista, Windows will properly align partitions.
By default, Windows will create a 100MiB/350MiB System Reserved partition when given a disk with no partitions.
- As MBR has a 4-partition limit, you may wish to create the Windows partition yourself before installing Windows.
- As GPT has a 128-partition limit, you may wish to let Windows partition the disk the way it wants to.
If you're trying to end Windows at a particular boundary, you may want to under-allocate and then use something like GNU parted to re-create the Windows partition at the boundary you want and then use diskpart with expand filesystem when you get back into Windows.
Install From USB
You can run the Window installer from a USB flash drive rather than the DVD-ROM. This should provide faster and quieter operation.
- Rufus is an open-source project that can create bootable USB drives from ISO images. The latest version can be downloaded here.
- Microsoft also provides a tool to do this that can be run under Windows XP, Vista, or 7. XP users must install Microsoft .NET Framework v2 and Microsoft Image Mastering API v2 before using the Windows 7 USB DVD Tool
Pre-Download
You may also wish to download video card drivers before hand, as AMD and NVIDIA usually offer drivers that are more up-to-date than what's available via Windows Update. Download either AMD Driver Auto-Detect or NVIDIA GeForce Experience
Use Windows Update Downloader to download security updates for your version of Windows.
- Use FOR %U IN (*) DO START /W %U /QUIET /NORESTART to execute all security updates in a given folder.
Download Anti-virus such as Avast, Avira, AVG, Bitdefender, etc.
You may also wish to check out Ninite which automates the process of downloading and installing dozens of software programs.
During Setup
There really aren't a whole lot of options. There are only a couple things to keep in mind.
- Decide how you want to handle having an Administrator account.
- The default in XP is that everyone becomes part of the Administrators group. NO!
- The default in Vista and 7 is that the first user created is part of the Administrators group and subsequent accounts are Standard Users. Better, but most people only create one account (for themselves) and use that. NO!
- This wiki recommends you choose one of the following
- Create one account not named Administrator that will be part of the Administrators group and use that for administrative duties while creating Standard User accounts for daily use. This allows you to have laxer password complexity on the account that acts as an Administrator.
- Create an account for yourself that you will later drop to Standard User after re-enabling the Administrator account using net user administrator /active:yes. This route requires that you know full-well that people will try to attack the Administrator account but you feel confident in your password complexity.
- Use a short name rather than a full name when creating user accounts in Windows XP onward. For example: john instead of John Smith. Windows XP an later hide a bit of the complexity in creating user account by setting the name/directory and the full name to whatever you type in for name. This way you get short names for directories.
- You can use CONTROL USERPASSWORDS2 (XP) or netplwiz (Vista onwards) to change full details.
- In XP, Vista, and 7, changes to the name in User Accounts only affect the full name.
Post Setup
Common Configuration Options
DPI settings
For HTPC setups, 96 DPI is unreadable from 9 feet away.
- XP: Control Panel → Appearance and Themes → Display → Settings → Advanced → General
- 7: Control Panel → Appearance and Personalization → Display → Set Custom text size (DPI)
That will only affect your login. To make this change to the login screen, you need to edit the registry.
NB: dword values are hexadecimal, not decimal. 0x78 is 120 decimal and 0x90 is 144 decimal.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop] "LogPixels"=dword:00000090
Enable ClearType in XP
- Control Panel → Appearance and Themes → Display → Appearance → Effects.
- Select Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box
- Select ClearType from the list.
Temporarily Disable System Restore
Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, some Hotfixes, and some third-party installers will all create a restore point. No sense having this running during the initial setup of Windows as you're so close to sqaure one anyway.
rstrui.exe
Turn Off Drive Indexing
If you have an SSD, you may want to turn this off since it creates more writes and SSDs are fast enough to make indexing pointless.
- Start Menu → Computer → Right click SSD drive → Properties → uncheck Allow this drive to be indexed → Apply → Ignore All
Hibernation
For desktop computers, or computers with SSDs, you may not want to hibernate.
powercfg -h off
Power Management
For at least the duration of setting up Windows, you may want to keep the computer fully awake.
Page File
With the RAM that most computers have nowadays, it makes little sense to have much of a swap file. You still want some space so that Windows can swap out parts of memory that aren't really being used. Some Windows programs will balk with the lack of a swap file.
[XP users] pagefileconfig /change /i 512 /m 512 /vo c: [Vista,7,8] wmic pagefileset where name="C:\\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=512,MaximumSize=512
Set Windows to use RTC in UTC
Only do this if your BIOS clock is set to UTC instead of local time!
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation] "RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001
Activate Windows
Windows Media Player and some Windows updates won't work until you do.
Additional XP Themes
The traditional three XP themes are old and tired.
- Royale Royale Nior Zune Embedded
- Royale Noir is incomplete and cannot co-exist with Royale
Essentials
| Software | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows Vista 32-bit | Windows Vista 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Service Pack | SP3 | SP2 | SP2 | SP1 | SP1 |
| Internet Explorer | IE8 | IE9 | IE9 | IE10 | IE10 |
| Windows Media Player | WMP11 | WMP11 Included | WMP12 Included | ||
| Video Card Drivers | ATI or NVIDIA (Use Windows Update for legacy cards) | ||||
| Anti-Virus | |||||
Download updates from Windows Update when this is done.
Tweaks
- Fix Optical Drive Not Appearing in Explorer
REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\UpperFilters]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\LowerFilters]
- Remove Outlook Express in Windows 2000 and XP.
REGEDIT4
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WAB]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WAB]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{44BBA840-CC51-11CF-AAFA-00AA00B6015C}]
[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{7790769C-0471-11D2-AF11-00C04FA35D02}]
rem @ECHO OFF
SET SPFILES=%WINDIR%\ServicePackFiles\i386
SET DLLCACHE=%WINDIR%\SYSTEM32\DLLCACHE
SET SYSTEM32=%WINDIR%\SYSTEM32
SET PFCOMSYS=%PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files\System
SET OUTLKEXP=%PROGRAMFILES%\Outlook Express
SET WINHELP=%WINDIR%\HELP
SET WININF=%WINDIR%\INF
FOR %%F IN (CSAPI3T1 MSOE MSOERES OEIMPORT OEMIGLIB WABFIND WABIMP) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%DLLCACHE%" "%OUTLKEXP%") DO DEL %%P\%%F.DLL
FOR %%F IN (MSIMN OEMIG50 SETUP50 WAB WABMIG) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%DLLCACHE%" "%OUTLKEXP%") DO DEL %%P\%%F.EXE
DEL "%OUTLKEXP%\MSOE.TXT"
FOR %%F IN (DIRECTDB WAB32 WAB32RES) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%DLLCACHE%" "%PFCOMSYS%") DO DEL %%P\%%F.DLL
FOR %%F IN (INETCOMM MSOEACCT MSOERT2) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%DLLCACHE%" "%SYSTEM32%") DO DEL %%P\%%F.DLL
FOR %%F IN (MSOE.CHM MSOE.HLP MSOEACCT.HLP WAB.CHM WAB.HLP) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%WINHELP%") DO DEL %%P\%%F
FOR %%F IN (MSOE50 WAB50) DO ^
FOR %%P IN ("%SPFILES%" "%WININF%" "%SYSTEM32%") DO DEL %%P\%%F.?NF
- Disable Home Groups in Vista and 7
Other Programs
Recommended For All Setups
Can Be Taken Care Of With Ninite
7-Zip | Audacity | CDBurnerXP | Chrome | Firefox | GIMP | Inkscape | InfranView | KeePass | LibreOffice | MediaMonkey | .NET 3.5 Runtime (XP) | Notepad++ | Opera | Paint.NET | PDFCreator | Pidgin | Skype | Steam | SumatraPDF | Thunderbird | TrueCrypt | qBitTorrent | VLC
Not Taken Care Of With Ninite
AVIDemux | CamStudio | CCleaner | Dia | Exact Audio Copy | Flash Player | Handbrake | LADSPA for Audactiy | LAME for Audacity | Lightscribe
Recommended For Advanced Users
Can Be Taken Care Of With Ninite
PuTTY | VNC | WinDirStat | WinSCP
Not Taken Care Of With Ninite
Alcohol 52% | CPU Burn-in | CPU-Z | HWiNFO | HWMonitor | HxD | Joystick2Mouse | MyDefrag | VirtualBox (Extensions)
Limited-Use Programs
ASUS Update | eBLU | nLite | rt7lite
