An Old School Geek’s approach to Installing & Setting Up a Windows PC

Bookmarked :)

Thank you geeks!

Thanks Wordsworth.

The partition plan becomes more important if you have multiple PCs. I do not want to adapt to every PC I am using, a computer serves me better when it is set up the way I am used to. This is why I follow the same partition plan on every computer, be it a real, physical one or a virtual machine. Whatever PC I am using I know where to find things, where everything is stored.

Keeping User profiles on another partition or rather on another disk has it's clear advantages. If the relocating of User profiles is done by changing the value of <ProfilesDirectory> variable as told in that tutorial of mine you mentioned, the new location is really hard coded to system and survives every recovery measure. This is especially practical when you need to restore a system image for this or that reason: it's enough to restore the C: image, it picks up the user profiles on E: (according to my personal partition plan) and works without issue. Instead of needing to restore a complete image with Users, it really is enough to restore the C: (and of course the possibly existing system reserved partition). restoring a 40 or 60 GB C: is much faster than restoring C: plus my 400GB+ User profiles.

All together, this approach to set up a Windows PC has worked extremely well for me. As I mentioned in my original post I rather use some extra time when setting up Windows than modifying it later. Windows and my PC should be there to serve me, not the other way around.

Kari

good work again fellow geek. I especially like the Partitioning part and Step 6, imaging a fresh up to date system.

Thanks Gary.

The best part in creating an image like that is that it allows you to restore a really virgin Windows. All software and drivers installed but no user data. First boot after image restore is the OOBE boot, stopping to ask the initial username and computer name.

Hi Kari

If possible can this wonderful tutorial be in a PDF file . Like your other tutorial " User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation "

VistaKing said:

If possible can this wonderful tutorial be in a PDF file .

I have written it to be published here at Seven Forums and by doing it I have voluntarily and gladly given at least shared copyright to the SF.

I would like to think people come here to see it, connect it with SF, rather than download it as it is to me something that belongs to Seven Forums.

I have difficulties to express my point, find correct words, but I hope you can understand it. I am a Seven Forums Geek, proud of it; what I might produce belongs here.

The tutorial you mentioned is on PDF because I was still quite new here doing it and I thought I was acting according to the forums best interests by saving storage space as the tut is quite big with lots of screenshots. Same thing with one of my other tutorials where I uploaded the screenshots to an external image site, for same reasons, to save storage space of SF. I later learned I do not have to think like that, SF has enough storage capacity, so these two were my only attempts to "save space" here.

I am reluctant to publish this as PDF if it is not especially asked by forum admins / mods, for reasons explained above.

Kari

No problem . I understand .