Installing A Windows Desktop

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Revision as of 19:03, 26 January 2022 by BrainwreckedTech (talk | contribs) (→Pre-Download: Removed Avast and AVG due to privacy abuses)
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Pre-Setup

BIOS Time Set To UTC vs Local Time

Windows 8 and 10 have support for setting the time to UTC and may even detect if the system 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 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.

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 Updates 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 Avira or Kaspersky if Windows' built-in Defender isn't enough for you.

During Setup

The default in Windows is that the first user created is part of the Administrators group and subsequent accounts are Standard Users. This wiki recommends you choose one of the following:

  1. 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.
  2. 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 to get short directory names. (E.g., john instead of John Smith) You can use netplwiz to change full details. Changes to the name in User Accounts in Control Panel only affect the full name.

Post Setup

Common Configuration Options

DPI settings

For HTPC setups, 96 DPI is unreadable from 9 feet away.

  • Control Panel → Appearance and Personalization → Display → Set Custom text size (DPI)

This will only affect your login. To make this change to the login screen, you need to edit the registry.

NB: word values are hexadecimal, not decimal. 0x60 is 90 decimal, 0x78 is 120 decimal, and 0x90 is 144 decimal. 

reg add "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop" /v LogPixels /d 90 /t REG_QWORD /f

Replace QWORD with DWORD for 32-bit Windows.

Re-Enable the Administrator Account

net user administrator /active:yes
net user administrator <new-password>

Disable Search Indexing

  • Control Panel > Indexing Options
  • Control Panel > File Explorer Options > Search
  • Drive Properties > Uncheck Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties
sc config wsearch start=disabled
sc stop wsearch

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

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. 

wmic pagefileset where name="C:\\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=512,MaximumSize=512

Disable Fast Startup

Windows Fast Startup does a hybrid sleep where everything is closed down on the software side, but the hardware is put into a sleep state before shutdown. If you multi-boot, this can be more of a hindrance than a feature. The major cause of concern is that mounted filesystems in Windows remain in a "in-use" state (the "dirty bit") and unsafe to mount.

  • Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > (left pane) Choose what the power buttons do > uncheck Turn on fast startup

Set Windows to use RTC in UTC

Only do this if your BIOS clock is set to UTC instead of local time! 

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation" /v RealTimeIsUniversal /d 1 /t REG_QWORD /f

Replace QWORD with DWORD for 32-bit Windows.

Tweaks

  • Disable Homegroups
    • Leave the homegroup
    • Disable HomeGroup services
    • Edit registry
      • Take ownership of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\{B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93}
      • Add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\{B4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93}\System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree=qword:0

Other Programs

It's recommended to rely on Chocolatey for program installation and to keep your programs updated. However, some applications are auto-updating and it's best to install them directly.

Chocolatey

In PowerShell: 

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Standard Utilities

These are basic utilties recommended for every user. 

choco install 7zip.install [ cdburnerxp | imgburn | infrarecorder ] chocolateygui greenshot kdeconnect-kde keepass.install vscodium.install

Power-User Utitlies

choco install gsudo hxd ultravnc windirstat winmerge

GNU/Linux Utilities (Windows Native Ports)

choco install git.install gnuwin32-coreutils.install wget xming

Audio

choco install audacity audacity-ffmpeg audacity-lame eac mediamonkey

Cloud Storage

choco install dropbox google-backup-and-sync onedrive spideroak sugarsync

Fonts

choco install jetbrainsmono lato robotofonts sourcecodepro ubuntu.font

Grpahics

choco install gimp inkscape paint.net

Hardware

choco install amd-ryzen-chipset crystaldiskmark cpu-z hwinfo.install hwmonitor intel-chipset-device-software

Internet

choco install [ chromium | firefox | googlechrome | ungoogled-chromium ] nextcloud-client qbittorrent syncthing thunderbird

Communication

choco install mumble pidgin skype

Office

choco install dia foxitreader librecad libreoffice-fresh libreoffice-help onlyoffice

Virtualization

choco install qemu virtualbox virtualbox.extensionpack

Video

choco install handbrake.install mpvnet.install obs-studio.install vlc

Not Taken Care Of With Chocolatey

CPU Burn-in | Joystick2Mouse 3 | LADSPA for Audactiy | Lightscribe

Ongoing

Extend Evaluation Periods

If you are using an Enterprise Evaluation edition of Windows, you can re-arm the 90-day evaluation period up to 3 times: 

slmgr /rearm
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