How to set up your new computer system the appropriate way

So you have received a new computer. Brilliant! That humble metal box is the crucial to a large globe of likely. It can help you with almost everything from juggling your funds to keeping in contact with your family to blowing off some steam on, uh, Steam.

But a new Computer is not like a new car or truck you can’t just switch a critical and set the pedal to the steel. Alright, perhaps you can—but you shouldn’t. Doing just a few easy routines when you first fire it up can help it be safer, more rapidly, and improved poised for the long run. Here’s how to established up a new laptop computer or desktop pc the correct way, stage by phase.

Run Windows Update on your new Laptop

The very first move is by much the most monotonous. You should not muck around on the world wide web unless your copy of Home windows is totally patched and up to day, period. Now for the negative information: Depending on how extensive your Computer system sat on the retail shelf, this could acquire minutes—or several hours. Both way, it has to get finished.

Microsoft releases new Home windows patches at least as soon as for every thirty day period. Important “feature” updates for Windows 10 and 11 transpired twice for every year in the earlier, but will sluggish to one particular per 12 months in the long term, with new features also remaining sprinkled in in this article and there all through the yr. If your personal computer is not entirely patched, you could be missing critical stability fixes and noteworthy new features.

Very first, make positive your PC’s connected to the net. In Home windows 10, open the Commence menu and head to Settings > Update and protection > Look at for Updates. Your program will look for for updates, and discover some. Obtain and put in them, then reboot your computer and do it again… and again… and again… right until the update check fails to return new entries. Hopefully it will not consider as well prolonged, but in worst-circumstance situations updating a new computer can take an hour or much more.

On the vivid aspect, Home windows will obtain and set up new updates as they roll out in the potential. You just have to get over this original hump!

If your new laptop arrived with Home windows 10 mounted, you may possibly see the alternative to improve to Windows 11. We recommend skipping Windows 11 for now. There is not only a new interface to study, but the fresh new-out-of-the-oven running program also has numerous tough edges and outright bugs in these early times. Really feel absolutely free to read our exhaustive Windows 11 evaluate and choose for yourself if it’s made available, while. If you by now have Microsoft’s new-look OS, here’s how to deal with Windows 11’s worst annoyances, and how to make Home windows 11 glimpse like Windows 10.

Put in your favourite browser

Surfing the web in an unfamiliar browser is like hoping to tango although you are putting on an individual else’s sneakers. It can be performed, but it ain’t very. Here are immediate inbound links for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera if Edge isn’t your matter.

Chrome has been our go-to choose for decades, but the Chromium-dependent edition of Microsoft’s Edge upset the extensive-time champion in our most latest spherical of internet browser screening. Edge is the best browser you can use right now if you really do not thoughts breaking absent from Chrome, and superior however, it’s Home windows 10’s default. We have recently run pieces extolling the virtues of Firefox, Vivaldi, Edge, and Opera if you want to enjoy about with your selections.

Established up your new PC’s protection

Now that you have slipped into a little something extra relaxed, it’s time to get your security ducks in a row.

Home windows ships with Windows Security enabled by default except your notebook or desktop contains a third-celebration antivirus trial. Home windows Protection is a stable, if not overly in depth resolution which is lifeless-very simple to use, excellent at sniffing out malware, and probably great more than enough for most men and women. It is not the most full-showcased anti-malware option out there, even though. You just cannot even timetable scans! VFAB’s guide to the very best antivirus for Windows PCs can assistance you obtain all the proper tools to preserve your Computer system secured. 

We also have a manual to setting up a strong free protection suite, but it can take more legwork and inconvenience than high quality antivirus choices.

Thoroughly clean your computer’s bloatware

With your defenses up, it’s time to start shoveling the crap out of your Computer.

You can skip this step if you constructed your possess Windows Computer system. Straight Home windows installations never come with extra junk cluttering up your hard drive. But boxed PCs from large-name Computer makers are inevitably brimming with bloatware.

The best way to jettison the junk is by typing “Add and take away programs” into the Windows look for box, then picking out the choice that seems at the prime of the outcomes. Go via the checklist and uninstall any unwelcome applications. Really don't delete applications from your hardware’s makers—leave software from the likes of Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, and HP or Lenovo on your own, for example—but truly feel cost-free to wipe out any bundleware you see. Some of the most normally preinstalled apps are antivirus trials, Dropbox, Candy Crush, Netflix, Spotify, “App Collections,” and other people.

If you determine to perform a new set up of Home windows to crystal clear the decks and want to keep some of the program becoming blasted absent (like Business office, say), be guaranteed to jot down the solution vital right before initiating the approach, working with a little something like Belarc Advisor to find it. Going by means of the apps listing and eradicating vital offenders need to operate very well adequate for most folks nevertheless.

Fill your new pc with computer software

Why would you scrap all that junk and clutter? To make area for your own things, silly. New components just begs for software package to match!

Outfitting your rig is an intensely individual affair, but if you’re looking for recommendations, VFAB has a manual to the very best free programs that are so useful, so handy, so downright practical that they really should be welcome on really considerably any Pc. These review roundups and computer software guides can also direct you in the direction of some of the best programs all-around:

Head in the direction of Ninite when it arrives time to truly install all that application. Ninite allows you set up numerous free purposes of your alternative all at after, even going so much as to quickly disable the bundled crapware that lots of absolutely free systems attempt to sneak in as component of the installation system. It is a incredibly useful software that normally takes the suffering out of loading up a new Computer system.

If your new notebook arrived with Windows 11 preinstalled, you may well be awkward with its radical new Start off menu and taskbar design and style. Think about examining out StartAllBack or Stardock’s Begin11 if so. Both of these $5 packages aid you reconfigure the appear and feel of Windows 11 in ways the working method by itself doesn’t. You can have it again to sensation typical in no time.

Again up your new laptop

Soon after all that, your Laptop is last but not least ready to rock: It is harmless, up to date, scrubbed totally free of junk, and entire of application fine-tuned to fulfill your unique requirements. The stop is in sight! But we’re not performed juuuuuust nevertheless.

Now that your PC’s in preventing shape it’s an great time to produce a clone or impression of your main difficult drive—the 1 Windows boots from—and help save it to another tricky drive. A clone or impression makes a snapshot replica of your generate, which you can use to boot up Windows if your primary travel gives up the ghost. Having an picture of your program in its present-day current, bloatware free, custom-made point out stops you from having to do all that legwork more than once more if you ever have to reinstall Home windows for any purpose.

So what is the difference between a clone and an impression? In essence, a clone results in an correct copy of your difficult generate on a different drive—files, master boot file, and all. The clone consumes the whole tough drive, but it’s plug-and-engage in if you ever want to use it. Images, on the other hand, generate a solitary, mammoth file containing all the stuff on your Pc. It takes a bit a lot more get the job done to get an image backup prepared to roll immediately after a catastrophe, but you have a lot more versatility in how you retail outlet it, given that it is effectively just a wonderful massive file. Lincoln Spector has a more in depth comparison if you are intrigued.

There are excellent backup instruments readily available that permit you generate clones and images, which we include in element in VFAB’s roundups of the best Windows backup software program and finest on line backup expert services. Do not want to spend for info defense? We have also rounded up the most effective free backup choices, and if you never brain performing additional technical gruntwork to preserve some funds, we demonstrate how to use Windows’ native imaging resource step-by-stage in VFAB’s guide to creating a free, foolproof backup system. Use a little something though. Regular backups are your data’s only savior if disaster strikes.

Optional: Update your new PC’s drivers

This stage is not for everyone. Number of things can introduce troublesome ghosts in your equipment faster than a driver that refuses to perform wonderful for whatsoever motive. If your from-the-box desktop Laptop is performing good and you only at any time approach to execute essential tasks like surfing the internet, working with Place of work, and things like that, really feel no cost to forget your personal computer even has motorists and retain on trying to keep on. Windows Update should’ve snagged moderately new drivers for your hardware in any case.

But if you cobbled with each other a Diy rig or are rocking a gaming device, it’s a superior thought to see if newer drivers are available for your hardware. Windows Update isn’t generally on the bleeding edge of driver updates, and new drivers for, say, your motherboard or community card can present useful element and overall performance updates. Players will need to update their graphics card drivers pretty frequently to make sure best functionality in the newest games. (Thankfully, you can do that effortlessly utilizing Nvidia and AMD’s will have to-have graphics suites, and they’ll allow you know when new ones are offered.)

VFAB’s guidebook to updating your Windows drivers has all the information you want to commence. It was created for Home windows 8, but if you search for Gadget Supervisor in Home windows 10 or 11, all of the same techniques outlined in the article nonetheless utilize. If a driver does somehow handle to bork your Personal computer, worry not, as Windows routinely results in a System Restore Point when you set up new system motorists.

And if true disaster strikes in some strange, excessive case, you’ve bought the backup graphic you’ve created—correct?

Optional: Study about your new laptop or computer

Now that all the tough get the job done is accomplished, get time to discover all the nooks and crannies of Windows—there’s an awful whole lot of shockingly effective, downright useful tools and methods hidden in its depths. Test out VFAB’s guideline to the best Windows 10 strategies, equipment, and tricks. You’ll decide up a great deal of valuable know-how. We’ve also got a roundup of Home windows 11’s most effective hidden functions, how to make Windows 11 search like Home windows 10, and how to resolve Windows 11’s worst annoyances. And regardless of which version of the OS you use, this information to 10 very little-identified Home windows capabilities that will blow your brain is worthy of a browse.

Wrap-up

At this position you are quite much completely ready to roll. Sure, there are some other duties you should really execute, these types of as transferring in excess of data files from your previous Laptop and conserving the merchandise keys for Windows and your other put in computer software (again, Belarc Advisor rocks for that), but you can do all that at your leisure. For now, just bask in the glory of owning a new Personal computer, secure in the expertise that it’s thoroughly optimized, guarded in opposition to attack, and recoverable if catastrophe strikes.

Delight in!