Windows 10 Clean Installation Guide

I don't know what to do. I searched the web 2h for information on whether Win 7 or Win 10 is better, and there isn't any . Would be really helpful to get some more opinions, preferably from users that gathered experience with both. All I want is my OS to perform well and Win 7 or 10 don't seem to make any difference. I'm seriously thinking about switching to Linux already -.- . If both Windows perform the same, then Win 10 has the advantages on boot and hibernate times + the longer support + DX12. I couldn't find anything speaking in favour of Win 7, everything the web says, is, that there's no real reason to upgrade if one has it, but now I already did, so are there actually any reasons to downgrade? I know some of you did, but be honest, did it bring you any advantage? I am at the point, where I want to set up my system newly, so I can decide which OS to install, but after what I found out, all of them are "bad" , even Linux.

Any information appreciated.

 

@Seraiel - Sure there is information out there, but it's hard to find because most people don't have a clue. Some don't care. Some that know cannot talk smack in public about the Redmond Nazis due to business agreements. Most assume newer always means better, but that's an extremely flawed way of thinking. DX12 is still irrelevant at this point. If you don't measure, they seem close.

I am triple-booting Windows 7, Windows 10 and Mint Linux 17.2 Rafaela. What I can tell you is, they do not perform the same. Click the link in my signature and then look at the table with benchmark comparisons. Windows 7 rocks and Windows 8/8.1/10 all suck. By most measurements, Windows 7 is faster. There are a few areas where 8/8.1/10 do better, but I can count them on one hand. Most notably, Windows 7 is the only one with decent CPU (physics) performance... not sure what Micro$loth did to screw things up after Windows 7, but they sure did... pretty bad.

I really do like Linux, but I seriously doubt it will ever be a Windows replacement. I'd love for it to be, and it deserves to be. Micro$haft has become very corrupt and self-centered, and I'd love to see them go down for the count. But, there are too many things (all software) I appreciate that are missing and either won't run under Linux, or require jumping through hoops with emulation. I also don't have time to burn a ton of calories to become a do-it-with-my-eyes-closed Linux geek like I am on Windows.

 

My thoughts too. When I tried Linux or Apple McDonald's OS, I was having a hard time finding the best alternative for this, the best alternative for that, took me way out of my comfort zone and I didn't like it.

I am too freakin' used to Nero 2016 Platinum Suite for example, qBittorrent, IDM, NOD32 AV, O&O Defrag Pro, dbpoweramp, etc....

I know there may be alternatives, but I have spent so much money on my licenses that I am in a position where it would be a total waste switching to anything else.

Taming Windows is the best I could do and we pros know how to do that. Poor average joe people is what I worry about.....

today I was helping a d00d install an nVIDIA Driver over TeamViewer, when I logged into his system, the poor guy was using Miscro$h4ft Edge as his browser and had a few tabs open, the webpages were all hidden by the horrible ads everywhere I telt like I am in Disney Land FFS! He never knew what is O&O ShutUp 10 so he had his computer acting as a Micro$h4ft Update server to upload the Windows Updates to other users and having all telemetry + key logging active, really really sad.

 

Word! I am right there with you on the investment.

The poor average joe people are stinking doomed. There aren't enough of us to help them, and there is no hope for some of them to ever know enough to make good and informed decisions. They are surrounded by idiots that simply don't know jack, and they [all of them] don't know what they don't know.

I guess we will just have to offer our prayers and condolences for those peasants and do what we can to find satisfaction in our existence as elitists.

 

Thank you for this guide! Now, the only problem i have is that i cannot seem to find my other drive(1tb drive) on my my computer. I did not unplug the 1tb drive cause that meant i had to open my laptop and them new aw are so hard to open. I installed the OS on my m.2 128gb drive.

EDIT:
OK so i solved it using disk management. I have just the second problem which is the latency. thanks

 

Also is this the normal latency for w10? thanks!

 

DPC latency checker does not work right with Windows 8 or 10...

http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

"Windows 8 Compatibility: The DPC latency utility runs on Windows 8 but does not show correct values. The output suggests that the Windows 8 kernel performs badly and introduces a constant latency of one millisecond, which is not the case in practice. DPCs in the Windows 8 kernel behave identical to Windows 7. The utility produces incorrect results because the implementation of kernel timers has changed in Windows 8, which causes a side effect with the measuring algorithm used by the utility. Thesycon is working on a new version of the DPC latency utility and will make it available on this site as soon as it is finished."

 

So you are telling me there is no way of telling(definitely) if your experiencing high latency? Anyways I am pretty sure after doing the clean install though things has gotten smoother as i havent experienced any problems(hiccups/lag/spike) in audio/games. Thanks for the heads up

Sent from my SM-N910S using Tapatalk

 

I've read of a latency problem when gaming online, so i. e. SC2 or MMOs, but I guess that's a different problem. The author wrote, that it was caused by the XBox application, and that powershell-removing it solves it.

Regarding your thoughts: I'm really very thankful for those, but unfortunately they don't help :/ . I don't have any licence problems, because I use mostly open-source software, I wouldn't know what i. e. Poweramp can do, that Footbar2000 can't, I don't need ACDsee because there is Irfan, Nero from what I heard is crappy bloatware and there are way faster and slicker alternatives and qBittorrent afaik would also work under Linux.

What seems really interesting to me though is the Physics performance, as you (Fox) say, that that's CPU performance, at least that's what I understood. What does this mean, is this only relevant for games, which I don't play anymore, or is this also relevant for i. e. Audio and Video encoding and editing? Because if it were, that would be a really good reason to go back to Win 7 then.

And regarding the n00bs: Nobody can help them. I wrote a 7 pages long letter to all my family, friends and contacts about how to handle Win 10 upgrade, how to stay at safe with Antivirus, Malwarebytes and AdwCleaner, how to maintain a system with Revouninstaller and CCleaner and some more things, like i. e. how to conduct an online Anti-virus-scan, which applications are best for basic tasks and working and privacy issues like having a VPN, setting faster or uncensored DNSs or using addons like DoNotTrackMe. The initial reaction from two persons was, that they thought I were spamming them, and my best friend was so scared after everything I wrote about getting a good Antivirus and how to handle malware infections, that he 1. installed Avast 2. installed McAffee and 3. installed NOD 32 and then wondered why his system wouldn't work anymore *sighs* . From most I heard nothing, so I guess that they don't care, one actually said TY and I know that his system is in a good state, because he i. e. chose Kaspersky. I know, that that's also no Pro-choice, but apart from licensing issues, Kaspersky is quite ok, and at least it's no Avira with Plugin-Browser-redirection that slows down browsing to a fraction of the possible speed, or Avast Free where the user allows that DDos attacks are driven on his system "to test the protection software" ~~ . We can only help the people we know or the persons around us, and as you see, even that already is hard and sometimes even useless or at least unrewarding.

I'm really interested in that CPU-performance issue. Saying that DX 12 is still long away may be true, and when I wrote, that all OSs perform the same, I was referring to most test-results, I believe you (Fox) (also) concluded, that Win 10 is only a mere 1% slower. CPU-performance is a great argument, especially for me, because I chose my AW with the smallest i7 that was available at that time (something like 3.2 GHz with Turbo) , I don't know if this is enough to talk of a bottleneck in the system. CPU at least is a way better argument than boot and hibernate performance, because CPU matters all the time. Also wonder if there are any more "unsolvable issues" with Win 10, as that's mostly my argument, Win 10 may be bad as it is, but as I'm not afraid to edit the registry, use powershell and also have your help, I wouldn't know what Win 10 should come up with that couldn't be solved...

 

Lately everything has been smooth after the clean install of windows 10(S/O to matrix leader for the huge help!). Dell will be sending me a new mobo + tech guy will be installing w 8.1 becasuse they couldnt help me out when i was experiencing this lag/spike/latency problems/audio problems last week. Since they called me just a few hours ago to setup an appointment since the parts are here,My plan is to switch mobo but at the same time just copy the w8.1 drive just incase everything goes crazy again. any idea what app i can use to copy/clone the w8.1 usb onto another usb of mine?

 

Macrium Reflect

Run it, click on the main disk you want to clone, then you should see a Clone Disk Button, click it, then select to where you want to clone it.

 

the pen drive does not shop up on matrium reflect anyway thanks for the help!

 

I think his suggestion is to image the HDD after Win 8.1 is installed, not to image the USB installer key.

 

Whenever i boot this shows up and i have no idea how to remove this. I have to go into bios or setup and click the secondary hdd (128gb ssd where my windows10 is installed)

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You have PxE boot enabled. Turn it off in the bios. You don't need it.


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where is it?

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is this the one?

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Nope, it will be something like "onboard NIC" in the boot device settings.

 

this is the boot options settings when i hit f12 as soon as my system starts maybe its in setup?

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Fox ? Can you plz still answer the question about if Physics performance is only important for games, or if it's really the CPU-performance that matters in all applications, especially during Audio / Video encoding / editing. Tia.

 

High Physics performance from processor in games and Bench tests = High CPU performance That Matter in all applications. If you have a low phycics score , then you have also low processor performance in the most applications. A weak processor, poorly optimized Os, software is essentially the same. Low performance/low physics. It does not help with a high performance processor if Os or software is poorly optimized. High processor physics is king .

 

I decided today, that I'm gonna stick Win 10. The main reason is, that I maybe want to install a more powerful graphics card, like the 980m i. e., and from what I've heard, those only run if BIOS is in full EFI bootmode, so legacy boot must not even be available. It's very likely, that I will do this upgrade, and I don't want to pay 170$ for Windows 10 Pro in 2-3 years.

 

That depends... What machine? On some Alienware model that is true, but that is because the BIOS needed to be updated. They did that for the Alienware 18 and now it works in Legacy just fine. Some other models must have UEFI without CSM due to the need for an update for Maxwell (won't happen on end of life models). I have 980M SLI in my EUROCOM Panther 5 beast running in Legacy BIOS and it works flawlessly... runs like a bat out of you know where.

 

Alienware M17rX4, BIOS A11. Someone in a thread asking for how to upgrade the graphics-card got told that he must be able to boot Full-UEFI, and he had the same model of Notebook like me.

 

Just a very short question to which I'll hopefully get a fast answer:

Is there actually even only one reason to not prefer the N version of Windows over the normal version? From what I know, VLC or MPC are better in really every possible way, and MS new mediaplayer is horrible, I can't remember having it used even once in the past 5y, except in situations like after a fresh install, when I didn't install VLC yet.

So question again, is there even only 1 reason to use MS-Mediaplayer?

Tia,

Seraiel

 

Ok, this is not going to be as easy as I thought: Here is a list of features, that the N-Editions all lack:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3010081

What makes it hard for me, are the mentioned issues about DRM missing , feature to synchronize devices missing, camera-support missing (I guess this includes the built-in webcam) and at last, maybe the mentioned media-streaming options.

What I ask myself is, how well these can be replaced with 3rd party software. I think Chrome has a built-in DRM feature, no idea, if that can work for everything. Synchronizing devices I don't know, I never synchronized anything with Media Player, but other data I did, like Photos i. e., if the feature is missing completely, I'd have little to no ideas how to replace it. Camera support, I'm sure, that there is an open-source webcam-driver, that is at least as good as the Windows one, and media-streaming is completely new to me, but now that I have a NAS, it could become interesting, maybe :/ .

Any help appreciated.

Sera

P.S.: What should not be forgotten, is, that it's easy to make a full version out of an N-version via installing the media package. The other way around doesn't work though, so a way might be, to test the N-version and see how far I come, and only take the media-package-upgrade once I really do something that needs it.

 

yes, it plays WMV videos better. In VLC they play like in slow motion for me even with hardware acceleration enabled. This is why I stopped using anything else but WMP + Shark007 Codec Pack

Also, you cannot activate the N Version of Windows unless you have a key specific for it. It's not the same OS

 

Thx .

 

I upgraded windows 10, however my laptop bluetooth is missing..
I can't find it in device manager...I tried install the driver, but it doesn't solve the problem..

 

Had the same problem. As far as I remember, there is one (unknown?) device in the device manager, select that one and manually install "Microsoft Bluetooth device" (or very similarly called in english) .

 

My laptop situation is a bit different, I can't find any unknown device in the device manager, all the devices are no problem except the bluetooth.
I have 2 laptops, 1 reset the bios and automatic find the bluetooth. However, the another one still can't find the bluetooth.

 

Seraiel, once you have upgraded a Windows 7/8/8.1 machine to Windows 10, your hardware is registered in MS's license database, so you can revert to Windows 8.1/7 and enjoy the stability there until Windows 10 has something worth upgrading.

There really isn't anything you can't do in Windows 8.1/7 now that you can do only in Windows 10.

No need to suffer while Windows 10 works out it's features and bugs over the next year

 

Only thing I could imagine is, that Bluetooth isn't enabled. Have you checked in the Win 10 Settings-menu -> Blootooth submenu that the Bluetooth advice is really enabled? Maybe something activated the flight mode switch and turned of the Wireless and Bluetooth devices. This is the only thing I can imagine, that would make the device not show up in the device-manager.

 

I'm grateful for this post, but I don't know what to answer. I'm aware, that I cannot do anything less with Win 7 than I can with 10, but I also can't do anything less with Win 10 than with 7. There's basically no argument against 10, that applies for my situation, even the higher Physics-performance of Win 7 is somehow negated by the slightly lower DX11 performance... Is downgrading to Win 7 even possible without hacking the registry, after having upgraded to Win 10 more than 30d ago? :|

 

The problems are with the stability of Windows 10 over the next year, as MS patches and repatches fixing problems, and MS rolling out new features / regressing features - it's going to be less than 100% stable for quite a while.

Windows 8.1/7 won't be getting feature upgrades, and drivers have been stable for a while, so they will be a haven for stable running while Windows 10 gets itself sorted out.

If you are past 30 days, your original OS may not be there to roll back - check the settings and look to see if you can roll back now:



How to rollback Windows 10 after 30 days limit
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/rollback-windows-10-after-30-days

If the option to rollback doesn't exist, then you can restore your backup taken before you upgraded to Windows 10... you did take an image backup, right?

You can image your Windows 10 install, in case you want to re-install it later, with Macrium Reflect - image to a file on an external drive.

Then do a system Recovery restore, depends on your vendor method to restore to the out of the box configuration.

Then update all the way back to current on Windows 7/8.1 - making sure to block the install of the Windows 10 upgrade nagware, and telemetry / keylogging crap.

Once you are happy with your install, have everything configured as you like, use Macrium Reflect to backup to an image file on an external drive - so you have the flexibility to restore to either Windows 7/8.1 and Windows 10 as desired.

For extra credit, use your backup ISO to boot a VM using VMware or Virtualbox for Windows 10, so you can track MS's progress over time.

It is safer to enjoy the ups and downs of Windows 10 as a VM

 

It could be like you said, but windows 10 cannot find the bluetooth device, so in the setting page has no bluetooth option for me switch on/off...
In the device manager, I opened the wifi card properties, I enabled the bluetooth option. But the result is same, nothing happen...
my laptop don't have the fn key to switch on/off bluetooth, so I don't know what I can do now...

 

Fantastic comprehensive guide. Thank you!

 

Glad you enjoyed it, thank you for the feedback brah.

 

Lots of useful info, all in one place. Thanks+++

 

When i had win 10 i kept getting black screens when booting from a cold boot but if i do a hard shut down and power up again it is fine....what could it be? could it be fast startup?

 

No... I don't ever use this fast startup garbage but had this problem anyway during testing of this new modern tiled Os junk late August.

 

That's the thing now, I don't remember if it was on or not. I still wonder if this is causing the black screen problem I had.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Fast start up create more problems than it is useful. Some had black screen whether this was on or not... Probably should this problem arise more with this garbage turned on but it has no impact on the result. The result was black screen anyway.
edit: If you experience this problem: Simply enter your password even if the screen is black.This worked for me.

 

i just want it to be painless LOL

but it probably wo't.

 

@Matrix Leader, something else you might look into for your tweaking:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/why-everyone-should-disable-vssadmin-exe-now/

 

I did a Clean install on two laptops with Windows 10 and what I found was even though M$ Windows 10 did the starting offset right according to msinfo32, upon checking it with other programs the partitions were not aligned, I checked with more than one program, I downloaded Minitool Partition Wizard Free 9 and it aligned all partitions correctly with a push of the Button. No loss of data, freezes, ect, all works as usual.

 

Which programs did you use?

 

I used Mini Tool Partition Wizard Free 9.1 to check and align all Partitions in one step, Aoemi and a few other can check and align all partitions as well.

 

Thanks a lot for the extensive guide!

There were quite a few tricks I was not aware of at the moment of reading!

 

BTW, there is no Clevo model called P870, it's either P870DM or P870DM-G (for the GSYNC one)