[Closed] Setting up a new computer - lets start this properly

The built in antivirus is fine. You don't need another antivirus program. CCleaner might have been useful back in the Win98 or XP days, it's more likely to cause problems now than to fix them. Ditch that.

Apps on fast disc.

Tick - Not sure what AV come with it but I will use that if there is one and only add AVG if there is none.

Tick - I have been using Crap Cleaner since forever but if you reckon it is redundant then fair enough. I assume there is another easy way to adjust auto-start programs that sneak onto the list unrequested during install.

Tick - Apps on fast disk it is.

As is. 10 or 11. Prefer 10, but 11 is a bit dumbed down.
Default windows security.
I do like Commodo Firewall (free) for outgoing. Often wondered why does notepad need to connect to the internet 🙂

Picasa.
Blender
Inkscape.
Firefox.
Gimp.
Moviemaker.
and dream appz Notepad with a spell checker would be perfect.

RT.

Does "Fast Hard Drive" = SSD and "Slow Hard Drive" = an actual hard drive?

But yeah I'd but as much as possible on the fast storage (system, apps) and use the slow storage for files/documents.

Depending on where it's coming from then Step 1 would be remove crapware/bloatware (or is that not a thing anymore?).

Sort your backup early doors as well.

Why do you have a fast and a slow hard disk? SSDs are that cheap now that it's not necessary unless you have multiple TB of things to store. HDs are ideal for archive storage and things you're not actively working on.

Tick - Gimp
Picasa - We've decided to retire Picasa in order to focus on a single photo service in Google Photos
Blender - will check out once I start playing with 3D
Inkscape - Will check this out too. Possibly instead of SketchUp for some of my planning
Firefox - Why instead or as well as Chrome?
MovieMaker - Why instead or as well as Davinci Resolver?
Agree about Notepad - somewhere to paste copied text that strips out all the formatting, tags and hidden shit from websites etc so you can paste it where you need it without all the baggage.

Any dictation software beyond standard Windows stuff? If it hard to type when the cast on my left hand keeps hitting the ESC button and cancelling stuff.

[i]Why do you have a fast and a slow hard disk? [/i] - Because that is what comes as standard. 256BG SSD and 2TB HDD

How big is your 'fast disk' SSD?

Use that for everything apart from mass storage of stuff you don't need to access very often.

And back up your mass storage, properly...

I think I have an old external HD somewhere I can dig out for back up but anything wrong with dumping stuff on the cloud somewhere? Where is good for a couple of TB of free storage?

I have been building, repairing and otherwise faffing with PCs since the early 90's. I really CCleaner and has worked well for me even on W11. Never had it cause an issue, not once. Find it really useful to clear out junk etc. Could do it manually but CBA.

anything wrong with dumping stuff on the cloud somewhere?

Not in principle.

However it varies. If I were you I'd pay for OneDrive or something, it's pretty good. It stores version history of your files and folders so if you accidentally delete something and then it syncs that deletion to the backup, you can get it back. Same is true of Google Drive and presumably others, but if you choose some 'free' thing it might not. Also, why would it be free?

assume there is another easy way to adjust auto-start programs that sneak onto the list unrequested during install.

Alt + Ctrl + Del
Select Task Manager
Go to the Startup tab

I bought a new laptop a few months back with Win11 installed. It seems half-baked. My other machines are sticking with Win10 for now. My guess is that the next feature update to Win11 will be a big improvement and the one after that will turn it into a decent OS. That's the normal MS pattern.

What hols said.

Tick – Not sure what AV come with it but I will use that if there is one and only add AVG if there is none.

It will almost certainly come with a trial version of something which will tell you to get your hand in your pocket. Uninstall it. Windows Defender will automatically kick in if you don't have any third-party AV installed. For most practical purposes it's not possible to run a modern system without AV, "none" is not an option.

Tick – I have been using Crap Cleaner since forever but if you reckon it is redundant then fair enough

CCleaner has its place. And its place is "about twenty years ago."

Create a separate admin account and use a standard user account for you (and others - in their own accounts) to do stuff.

https://www.ricksdailytips.com/limited-windows-account/

Sounds like AVG and CCleaner are just hangovers from advice I was given pre-2000 which is the last time I git someone who knew what they were doing to help set up my computer.

GoogleDrive is where my stuff is at the moment.

This is my personal computer so not used for work stuff or anything critical. If it blew up tomorrow I don't think there is anything I would really lose. Photos are on Google Photos and I have lost everything before ?2012? when whoever I was with then disappeared and I couldn't recover my photos. I guess this is a theoretical risk with Google too.

I know that if the software is free then I am the product but I am happy for other to try and make money selling adverts to me based on my amazing video productions.

Admin account is probably a good shout

On 4), Libre Office is a more up-to-date fork of Open Office.

assume there is another easy way to adjust auto-start programs that sneak onto the list unrequested during install.

If you don't want them, uninstall them. If you want them but not on startup, there's usually an option in the app to change this behaviour.

@worldclassaccident

Picasa is old. I'll link you my install copy (if you want), installed on every PC I've had over the years. Very useful.

I redirect my documents, My pictures, My videos to a onedrive location (C:\Users\andyd\Onedrive\Documents). Everything I work on is therefore safely auto synced to the cloud. We have that as a sort of policy in the household & it lets us all jump between any of our laptops & get access to all of our docs easily. I can also use the web client or ios onedrive app to view & edit anything I need.

I only sync locally anything I'm working on frequently, everything else is just stub files and shortcuts. Downsync from onedrive is pretty rapid.

I use microsoft login as well which effectivy means I end up with a roaming profile on my home PC. If I eve need to blow one of the workstations away its simply a matter of re-installing the apps & everyting pops back into place.

OS and apps go on my SSDs, %users% used to be moved to the spinny disk. However both my surface and XPS just contain SSDs now so I don't bother with that stage any more.

but anything wrong with dumping stuff on the cloud somewhere?

Yes and no. It is not a true back up and you have zero control over it at a high level so not to be relied on as a primary back up. Cloud services do have issues sometimes and you have no real recourse should they lose some of your stuff.

So, I have various large hard drives dotted around the house all of which back up the same data as well as a spare drive in my work station also backing up the same data so should one drive die there are others with the same information stored on it. I use Aomei Backupper to automagically manage all the actual backing up routines. Prefer it to Acronis, less intrusive and just sits there in the background doing its thing.

I do also use OneDrive as a secondary store as it is offsite but if I were to do it properly I would have another physical hard drive at another address to back up on to. But CBA to go that far.

@Cougar - interesting its 2:1 against CCleaner. What do you use instead to de-crap your PC. For eg yesterday CCleaner kindly informed me it had found over 1gb of crap and got rid of it for me. I can't be arsed trawling through temp folders etc cleaning them out so how else can I automate the process? Always open to better ideas 🙂

Create a separate admin account and use a standard user account for you (and others – in their own accounts) to do stuff.

I wouldn't bother with that, personally. For a long time now even if you have an Administrator account Windows has run everything in standard privileges and when it needs to do something that requires administrator privileges it pops up saying that it needs admin privileges and you have to click ok. This is called User Account Control and it's basically doing the thing that you suggest but automatically.

The main reason for this is that if you download some malware it will run as you, not admin, unless the pop-up appears and you click ok. So you need to understand that if the popup appears when you're not expecting it i.e. when opening a document or just browsing, then something is wrong and you should click no.

I don't think you can delete much in the way of important system files these days anyway unless you are determined. It won't let you edit anything in Program Files for example even if you click 'ok' on the popup without warning you that you're about to screw something up. And I am not even sure that you can access the contents of C:\Windows at all even if you do have admin privs. There's another layer of privilege above admin that is quite difficult to work around.

It is not a true back up

It can be.

I redirect my documents, My pictures, My videos to a onedrive location (C:\Users\andyd\Onedrive\Documents)

That is the default behaviour these days.

Sounds like AVG and CCleaner are just hangovers from advice I was given pre-2000 which is the last time I git someone who knew what they were doing to help set up my computer.

Yep, this is all XP-era advice. I used to be an advocate of AVG, but the free version got successively more rubbish with each release as they wanted you to pay for it.

It can be

A third party hosted cloud service can never be a true back up to be 100% relied on as you are not 100% in control of the hardware. Shit can happen beyond your control. Adobe lost a load of people's work not long ago for example and a number of people had no other copy of that work.

If you have your own physical servers somewhere then yes, this could be construed as cloud backup also and can be considered 'true' as you are in control of both the hardware and the files stored thereon.

Picasa does still ‘work’ YMMV on Windows 10, but get it from a trusted source if you trust the geezer up there 👆

Yeah, avoid using Admin yourself as any malware could use that to go further than just your user context.

Speaking of which, Defender is a perfectly acceptable AV solution these days. There really is no need t get anything else on a Windows machine unless your corporate environment has an established solution that is not Defender. Same with a firewall. Windows forewall may not be perfect, but it works.

In terms of what to do, the first thing would be to patch as much of the base OS as I can before adding apps. If you are staying on 10, patch that, had the 21H2 update, patch. Look for the relevant optional updates to .Net, get those on. If you are buying something with a tonne of pre-installed crap (like Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Acer) spend the time deleting it.

Resolve is a pretty heavyweight video editor. If you want something for quicker edits, Moviemaker should do for that. Sae the big lad for the 4k cinematic masterpieces.

On storage, SSD is not _ideal_ for long term, barely used stuff. It's far better used as the main disk for the OS and apps that you are going to use and storage for apps that need a lot of IO. Spinning rust HDD is a cheaper option for longer term storage and, if backup is important, having a NAS with some sort of RAID would be a plan. Likely for "Future WCA" to worry about though.

What do you use instead to de-crap your PC. For eg yesterday CCleaner kindly informed me it had found over 1gb of crap and got rid of it for me.

What was the crap? How did CC cleaner know it was crap?

There's a Windows option to delete temp files, which has two levels of action (for some reason).

Yeah, avoid using Admin yourself as any malware could use that to go further than just your user context.

Yes, don't log in as 'Administrator' but do create an administrative user, and use that. You won't be actually using those admin privileges all the time, just when you install something or change settings.

What was the crap? How did CC cleaner know it was crap?

Cookies, tmp internet files, broken downloads etc. It is all crap as I periodically check what it has decided is crap. It is invariably correct. The driver update feature works very well also. Again, yes there are other ways of skinning that cat but I find it useful enough to keep using.

I’m sure some helpful person has said it but:
Now get a USB pen drive, head over to Unbuntu, and install a dual boot system with Linux. 😉

Cookies, tmp internet files, broken downloads etc

Browsers limit the size of cached files themselves, and how does it know you don't want those cookies?

Now get a USB pen drive, head over to Unbuntu, and install a dual boot system with Linux.

No, don't.

@scuttler

How dare you sir! I've been on this forum forever.

Geezer... 🙁

😉

PS Picasa 39 was last version by Google.

Now get a USB pen drive, head over to Unbuntu, and install a dual boot system with Linux.

Should I try and get an Apple VM as well so I can have three options to do the same thing when the default works fine for me? 🙂

If you have your own physical servers somewhere then yes, this could be construed as cloud backup also and can be considered ‘true’ as you are in control of both the hardware and the files stored thereon.

It could still go wrong though, and I'd argue that Microsoft are less likely to lose your files than you are.

It could still go wrong though, and I’d argue that Microsoft are less likely to lose your files than you are.

Hence why local backups are important too. OneDrive et al should not be relied on as a single point of backup. It does go wrong for people; accounts get locked out, files get accidentally deleted etc and just occasionally the shit does hit the fan server side.

The rule of backup has been, for a very long time, 3 separate copies or the file does not exist. Cloud can be one of those copies for sure but you need others.

What do you use instead to de-crap your PC.

Generally, I don't really care. I'm not running Windows 98 any more, 1GB of alleged 'crap' on a 1TB is a tiny amount. I periodically run Disk Clean-Up, which deletes orphaned data in a MS-approved way.

The notion that your PC needs "cleaning" is a nonsense.

Now get a USB pen drive, head over to Unbuntu, and install a dual boot system with Linux.

In the event that you need Linux, you can install it directly into Windows these days.

Bloody fanboys.

@Cougar - fair and thanks for your response. Yes, I understand that POCs don't require cleaning as such and it is a nice marketing word for someone somewhere. I just find CC quick and easy but am happy to drop it. Old habits die hard sometimes 🙂

I periodically run Disk Clean-Up, which deletes orphaned data in a MS-approved way.

Is that the on board windows program or one you can recommend ?.

.

I dont think i've ever done a disc clean up and the computer is several years old now. Everything works well and it doesn't seem slow, but all the same a clean up is probably something thats good to keep it all running.

In fact, on a whim yesterday, I deleted my old emails from my yahoo mail account. Discovered i'd 4500 of them 😆

Is that the on board windows program

Yes. If you run it as Administrator then (I think!) it works across all user profiles rather than just your own (which is what Molgrips was questioning).

Everything works well and it doesn’t seem slow, but all the same a clean up is probably something thats good to keep it all running.

But this is my point. Once of a time this was critical. Today, it really doesn't matter.

If I'm honest the only reason I run Disk Clean-Up at all is some sort of primal need to feel like I'm "maintaining" it. Well, aside from one PC where I'm genuinely running out of space on a 100GB SSD system disk, and the fix here is 'buy more storage'.

We're doing these things - and recommending it to others - out of habit. Even Ubuntu-Face's comment up there - who actually dual-boots any more? It's never been anything other than a workaround, and a potentially dangerous one at that. There are better ways of doing this stuff.

I missed a bit I meant to add re: CCleaner.

One other thing you need to consider is that whilst your "1GB of crap" may look impressive, what happens when you delete it?

Let's take temporary Internet files as an example. You clear your browser's cache (which you can do in a manufacturer-approved way from within the browser) and claw back a chunk of space. Why do you suppose they were there in the first place? The cache holds local copies of commonly used assets so that you don't have to re-download them every time you access the same page. Delete them and, well, you'll have to download them again. Net result: You've slowed down your browsing; you've increased your data usage; and you've not actually gained anything because the first thing your browser is going to do is fill it straight back up again.

So then you re-run your CCleaner a month later, it deletes another 500MB of 'crap' and you think "wow, this is brilliant!" when the reality is that it's the same crap you deleted last time around and the OS / apps have just replaced.

Your PC isn't dirty. Leave it alone.

I just find CC quick and easy but am happy to drop it.

If you like it and are happy using it then fine. I just twitch slightly when it gets pushed as a recommendation to people who by their own admission aren't really sure what they're doing. It is - or at least was the last time I looked at it which admittedly was a long time ago - potentially dangerous in over-zealous hands.

A cloud backup solution and a local NAS backup.

I use Backblaze for cloud backup and a Synology NAS for local. I've got both so that I have a quick restore if I need it and can restore from cloud if the house burns down. If you've got super fast internet you may not need the NAS but I've only got 36Mb download.

Why do you need a NAS for local backup? Mine is a USB hard drive that lives at my mum's.

(Genuine question, I may be missing something. It just seems overkill to me unless it also has other duties.)

If you like it and are happy using it then fine. I just twitch slightly when it gets pushed as a recommendation to people who by their own admission aren’t really sure what they’re doing. It is – or at least was the last time I looked at it which admittedly was a long time ago – potentially dangerous in over-zealous hands.

This I 100% agree with 🙂

Re: you comment about NAS. I have mentioned before (and apologies if I am preaching to the converted) but NAS and RAID are two different things. My single large hard drives are attached to my wireless access points around the house so are NAS by definition but are simply connected by USB to my routers.

Simple, effective and secure. But yes, I should have one remotely somewhere - I just do not know where to house it...

Why do you need a NAS for local backup?

I don't need it I guess but it makes backups completely automatic so I never have to worry about them, the Synology client just does it. It's just a cheap, low end Synology enclosure with NAS HDD.

I do periodically test backups from both, just like I would at work.

My single large hard drives are attached to my wireless access points around the house so are NAS by definition but are simply connected by USB to my routers.

Aha, so literally NAS rather than "a NAS enclosure." That to my mind makes way more sense. I've been toying with doing something similar.

it makes backups completely automatic so I never have to worry about them, the Synology client just does it.

That's a good point, if the killer app here is "ease of use".

@Cougar yes - NAS as in network attached storage. It is storage, it is connected to the network (although not to a physical PC), it is NAS 🙂

Works very well and I just use cheap hard drive enclosures and plonked the 4tb drives that used to populate my now dead actual NAS enclosure. Would rather have 3 or 4 single large drives dotted around than them all in a NAS enclosure in RAID, which for domestic backup purposes, is pointless. IMO, YMMV etc etc.

@Murray - it is not the enclosure that makes backups automatic and easy, rather the software. I use a Aomei and it fully automates the process also. However, it works for you and you're actually backing stuff up so perfect 🙂