Rebuild Windows PC - Feb 2022

[scottmuc]

Yay for Repaving!

As much as possible is documented inline in this issue template. In case of problems you may find help by viewing all the previous repave issues. Have fun!

Prep

• [x] backup stuff if you think you need it.

  Instructions

  • Desktop
  • Downloads
  • Documents

[x] prepare USB device with a Windows installer.

Instructions

Here's my primary influence.

Repave

• [x] boot to the USB.

  Instructions

  • Hit F12 while machine is rebooting to load boot menu.
  • The drive that is less than 50GB is likely the bootable USB device.

[x] wipe old partitions.

[x] run Windows installer.

Post Paving

• [x] Install Chocolatey

  Instructions

  • https://chocolatey.org/install

[x] Install BoxStarter

Instructions

• choco install Boxstarter

[x] Install my Box Starter Package

Instructions

Thanks Rich Turner for your excellent example!

Launch Powershell with elevated privileges:

Install-BoxstarterPackage -DisableReboots -PackageName https://github.com/scottmuc/infrastructure/blob/master/homedirs/windows/boxstarter.ps1

[x] Windows update

[scottmuc]

It's been a year since I last repaved. I'm not confident that this repave will go smoothly. I seriously need to repave monthly in order to build up that confidence. Now is a good time since I'm not in the middle of any important projects on my PC.

[scottmuc]

Not super confident in my backup. Actually, it's more that I know I've copied files off the machine, but I've scattered them around. My most important documents are at least saved somewhere I look at frequently.

[scottmuc]

Old URL to setup USB installer is no longer working, thankfully MS has provided a couple useful links:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/install-windows-from-a-usb-flash-drive
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

[scottmuc]

Pretty happy at how smoothly this has gone. I'm now using Brave, used 1 Password to access my GitHub account, and the Boxstarter script worked without any issues the first time it ran.

Some annoyances

• whish Steam installed with a default setting of not launching on startup
• Need to fix URL in Boxstarter instructions
• I need to define some acceptance criteria to my repave (benchmark numbers, launch a specific game with game save intact, record a video)

[scottmuc]

Need to add hostname updating as part of the process

[scottmuc]

Need to re-pair my Logitech bluetooth speakers

[scottmuc]

Novabench

I was really surprised that Radeon drivers were already installed! I hope I can get away without installing the Radeon software suite because it's a lot of cruft of things I never use.

CPU 1531 RAM 267 GPU 1031 Disk 78

This should be better once I installed the Samsung disk utility.

[scottmuc]

Install Samsung magician and enabled the perf mode...

CPU 1628 RAM 270 GPU 1074 Disk 347

Total 3319

[scottmuc]

Rather happy that I was able to get back into my Dark Souls game 2hrs after the repave begun. Same for Humankind

[scottmuc]

Either need to create a Brave account or better describe my Brave config so I can replicate it

• 1 Password manages the password stuff
• getpocket extension install
• Unhook extension for Youtube UI minification
• default search to DuckDuckGo

[scottmuc]

I've connected my Ledger Nano S to Ledger Live and can see my holdings.

[scottmuc]

• Install and configure Google Drive

[scottmuc]

For some reason the IPv6 disabling coding the the boxstarter script isn't working, but when I run it myself, it works.

[scottmuc]

I've made the template a tiny bit better. So far everything is fine with my Windows PC but haven't really used it that much since I repaved. Might repave again this weekend.