New Sager NP8678-S off to bumpy start - advice needed

First off, just want to say I had a great experience buying the NP8678-S direct through Sager. Time from placing order to receiving the laptop was just over a week (with a weekend sandwiched in between). Impressed!

Had a weird experience doing some initial setup -- it's a Windows 10 OS. I was downloading the Kaspersky AV installer (I have a subscription and have used Kaspersky for years without problems with my other PC) -- noticed the download was taking a *very* long time, only 150MB but it wasn't even done after 45 minutes.

Next thing I notice, the laptop is trying to reboot, seemingly after some kind of crash. Bizarre.

Well, I couldn't log in to Windows anymore - trying to boot up, I kept landing on a Windows error page, and couldn't get to my desktop.

Tried a few things but in the end decided to take the somewhat drastic step of Resetting Windows 10. Knew that would be a *long* process and it definitely was -- several hours.

Good news was, the reset seemed to work properly. I'm able to boot up and login without problem.

I'd love some advice on what more I should do to get back to the state the laptop was in before the OS reset. I notice, for instance, that only *3* drivers are installed in the "Programs and Features" control panel, and nothing else -- there were definitely more items populating this menu before I resetted.

I'm not really sure if all the drivers I need got reinstalled. Interestingly, the Nvidia driver reinstalled without my having to do anything after the reset.

The laptop came with a "Device Drivers and Utilities CD", but this model doesn't have a DVD drive -- so I'd have to buy an external drive if I'm going to make use of that -- should I?

I also have a Windows recovery USB thumbdrive -- I tried to use that after the reset, thinking it would install any missing drivers / programs, but I couldn't get it to work and so gave up.

TL-DR: Should I just 'count my blessings' here and not try to tweak anything further, or, after doing the OS reset, is my Sager now missing some key drivers etc. that I really should try to reinstall?

(And I wonder if I should even try to install Kaspersky AV after the disaster that happened the first time.)

Any insights or advice welcome. Thanks for reading!

 

Clevo P870DM n00bie's guide

 

Do you have a PC with a CD drive next to you available?

As I'm sure it does, but on the off chance it doesn't, does your laptop with a fresh W10 have a generic WiFi driver installed so you can connect to the internet/router?

If so, you can access the CD in the PC thru wifi instead of getting an external drive.

I'd just start from scratch, go thru the entire windows install process rather than recovery/reset within windows. I'd go in the setup, fully format (secure erase not necessary), and start from there

 

If you did a clean install, and are missing some drivers, definitely find the ones if you have the yellow "!" indicating uninstalled items in the device manager. If the other parts are working fine, and you have no issues with the performance of them, maybe just let those go for now. Maybe just update them if you notice something isn't performing the way it should.

If you do want to install anything, maybe do them one at a time. Update a driver, try it out, see if it is stable, then go to the next one. Hopefully you could possibly find out maybe which one was the issue in the first place that way. I would think you should be able to install your antivirus. I don't think I've heard of any issues with that and Sager models before. Maybe also check for all windows updates as well, then start installing things after that.

 

Appreciate the feedback, all.

I'm reluctant to do a clean install, given that the OS reset took several hours.

One question: is Resetting win10 essentially the same as doing a fresh install?

Also, does Windows 10 just try to automatically download and install drivers if it finds ones that are missing?

It's weird -- for example, after the reset, the Nvidia driver was installed, but it doesn't show up in "Programs and Features" in the windows control panel (whenever I've installed Nvidia drivers in the past, they always show up there).

 

I believe there options to have it completely wipe everything clean, or keep some of the applications maybe. Been a little bit since I've done it though.

Yes, it will. Sometimes if you want to go with a specific version of a driver (like an older Nvidia one), you would want to turn off wifi before you uninstall and reinstall the driver, or it could start to download the driver it sees missing. It might have downloaded the driver, but not downloaded anything like the GeForce experience that normally comes if you get the driver yourself from their website.

 

Even if you disable Automatic Driver updates, if Windows Update detects that a certain hardware component has no driver, it will install it from Windows updates regardless. That's why I ensure I download the latest drivers first, configure Windows to my liking, then take a system image using Macrium Reflect for if I ever want to go back to a clean state.

Next, I install all the drivers but DO NOT connect to the internet until all drivers are installed. then when I connect to the internet, only Windows updates are downloaded as all drivers are up to date to start off with.

Installing Windows 10 only takes 10 mins vs the refresh option which might take ages. and might not even work for that matter. never worked for me anyway

 

Feel free to give us a call if you are having issues on Monday, I'd try the full format and re-install myself.

 

Really appreciate the assistance, everyone -- this community is a terrific resource.