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06-01-2012, 04:29 PM
Hate all that crapware on a new PC? Learn how to get rid of it yourself.
by Andrew Cunningham (http://arstechnica.com/author/andrew_cunningham/) - June 1 2012
(http://arstechnica.com/features/2012/06/blowing-away-bloatware-a-guide-to-reinstalling-windows-on-a-new-pc/?comments=1#comments-bar)
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/crapwaredesktop-640x480.jpg
Does your new PC's desktop look like this, or worse? It doesn't have to be this way!
We recently reported on a new service offered through Microsoft Stores: for $99, technicians will reinstall a clean copy of Windows on any new PC, wiping out all of the bloatware that shipped with the computer and installing a few basic productivity applications in their stead.
We ended up with nearly as many comments on that story as it had words. The discussions included whether $99 was a fair price for the service, alternatives to completely wiping out and reinstalling the operating system, and the reasons why PCs come with so much pre-installed software in the first place. Whichever side of these various arguments you came down on, the general consensus was that bloatware brings down the price of PCs—but is otherwise supremely terrible and should be nuked from orbit.
This guide aims to address all of these points in one big, sweeping go, both for home users and for smaller businesses without dedicated IT staff. People who have never tried this before will learn enough to be able to download Windows installation media, hunt down drivers, and reinstall their own operating system. Technical users who have done all of this before can pick up some information about how Windows installation media and the Windows activation process have changed since the Windows XP days. And everyone should come away with an idea of what goes into installing Windows from scratch on a new PC, and just what that $99 will pay for.
Before you start
For the purposes of our guide, we will begin with a new PC that has just been taken out of the box and hooked up for the first time. Before we get started, you're going to want to download a few things, so don't reformat that hard drive just yet—turn on the PC and walk through Windows' first-time setup process. All you need to do is get to the desktop, connect to the Internet, and fire up a Web browser. This guide isn't going to walk you through preserving any personal data on the PC you're reloading, so it would be best to not yet do anything on this computer you'll want to keep.
Getting Windows install media
After you've booted the PC to its bloatware-infested desktop and clicked through the various EULAs and pop-up boxes for software you'll never use, the first thing you're going to want to do is get a copy of the vanilla Windows install media—most new computers these days don't come with that sort of thing, and the restore functionality they do include is just going to restore all of the bloatware, too.
It used to be that getting Windows install media without actually buying a retail copy of Windows required you to visit less-than-legitimate sites and hope that whatever you downloaded wasn’t infested with viruses. No longer: you can now download your Windows media from Digital River, the company Microsoft uses to supply ISOs to people who buy Windows online. These downloads are identical to the “full install” versions of the Windows install media.
Windows 7 Install Media Download Links
Windows 7 Home Premium with SP1
32-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-58996.iso)
64-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-58997.iso)
Windows 7 Professional with SP1
32-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59183.iso)
64-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59186.iso)
Windows 7 Ultimate with SP1
32-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59463.iso)
64-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59465.iso)
You'll want to download the media for the same edition of Windows that came with the computer, so check the Windows sticker on the bottom or side of the computer or the System control panel to see what you've got. Most new consumer PCs will come with Windows 7 Home Premium, but Professional and Ultimate sometimes show up on mid- and high-end machines.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/windowsedition.png
Checking the Windows edition in the System control panel. You can also find this information printed on your Windows license sticker.
This should go without saying, but note that these downloads do not include a license or a product key to install Windows—you'll still need a valid "full install" or OEM license and product key to legally install Windows on anything. They are, however, a convenient way to get new install media if (1) your computer didn't come with generic Windows install media, as is almost always the case these days, (2) your original Windows media has become lost or damaged, or (3) you want to replace your old Windows install disc with one that has the latest Service Pack integrated already, especially useful since Microsoft has made the service pack slipstreaming process much more difficult since the XP days.
Once you’ve downloaded the ISO for your Windows edition and bit-ness, you can either burn it to a DVD using Windows 7's built-in DVD burning tool or copy it to a USB drive using Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool (http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool).
At this point, we run into one of the most common misconceptions about reinstalling a clean copy of Windows on a new computer: that install media bought in a store (or, in our case, downloaded from Digital River's servers) won't work with the OEM license key printed on the computer.
This was, in fact, true back in the days of Windows XP, and that operating system's longevity and popularity is why this belief persists—Microsoft's OEM partners are given special Windows media and license keys that are used to install Windows en masse on new PCs. This Windows media checks for a special string in a computer's BIOS to verify that the computer was from one of Microsoft's OEM partners, and would not require additional action to activate if that string was found. This whole process is called System Locked Pre-installation (SLP), and it's still in use today—for example, the Dell-branded Windows install media included with my Dell Latitude does not require activation after installation because it knows to check the BIOS for the requisite text string.
The difference is that the OEM versions of Windows XP install media would not accept a product key for an off-the-shelf copy of Windows even if that key was valid and vice-versa. Volume license customers had yet another variant of install media for use with their product keys (one of the reasons this whole mess existed was to prevent people from using leaked volume license keys for Windows XP Pro to activate commercially available install media). Getting around this limitation was possible if you were willing to copy your install media to your hard drive, fiddle with some of the files, and re-burn it, but this was a hit-or-miss procedure that didn't work consistently and was well out of most users' comfort zone.
Due in part to changes in Windows volume licensing, this is no longer the case. Retail Windows 7 DVDs will happily accept OEM license keys as long as you're using "full install" media rather than "upgrade" media. You may have to use Microsoft's phone-based activation process rather than the more convenient Internet activation, but there are no other technical roadblocks and there's nothing in Microsoft's EULA that prevents it as long as you're using the same edition of Windows and you're not using your OEM key to install Windows on multiple systems (Microsoft didn't respond to requests for clarification on the issue). You can even switch between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows if you'd like.
I’ve also been asked whether wiping out the installed copy of Windows will have any impact on the computer’s hardware warranty—the short answer is no. The warranty terms for all the major PC vendors (I checked HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, and Toshiba specifically, and a Lenovo representative confirmed for me) separate hardware and software pretty clearly, meaning that wiping out the factory-installed copy of Windows with a fresh copy (or even another OS) will invalidate any sort of software support provided by that computer’s manufacturer, but if the hardware fails within the warranty period they’re still obligated to fix the problem.
Downloading drivers and software
The next thing to do, and one of the most important, is download the drivers for your hardware. Doing this before installing our fresh copy of Windows on the computer isn’t necessary, but if you have the computer’s fully populated Device Manager window to guide you, it makes it much easier to identify and download the drivers you need.
For a broad overview of the Windows installation and driver hunting processes, this part of last year’s “How to build your own computer” feature is a great place to start. Since you’ll be installing Windows right off of the DVD with no extra drivers or customizations, the process will be identical to installing the OS on a computer you built yourself.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-25-at-10.30.31-AM-640x398.png (http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-25-at-10.30.31-AM.png)
A list of drivers on Dell's download site. Most manufacturers make it relatively easy to get the drivers you need. (http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-25-at-10.30.31-AM.png)
The good news is that OEM support pages are typically a bit easier to navigate than your average motherboard manufacturer’s, and it’s a bit simpler to remember and search for something like “Dell Latitude E6410” than “GA-H61N-USB3.” Dell (http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriversHome/NeedProductSelection), HP (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/siteHome?cc=us&lc=en), Lenovo (http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/default.page), Acer (http://support.acer.com/us/en/product/default.aspx), Toshiba (http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/home.jsp?nav=Download), ASUS (http://support.asus.com/Download/Options.aspx?SLanguage=en&type=1), and others all have pretty good support pages into which you can type your computer’s model name or serial number and operating system and get back all of the drivers you need for a new Windows install.
The three most important types of drivers you’ll need to get a clean Windows install off the ground are graphics (or video), networking (both wired and wireless), and sound (or audio), so make sure you grab those first. If there are multiple drivers available under each entry, you can check the Device Manager to see what kind of hardware you’re using, or you can just download all available drivers to make sure your bases are covered.
The other drivers you need will depend on the equipment installed in your computer, and this often varies from manufacturer to manufacturer—Lenovo laptops use a custom power management driver that you’ll need to look out for, and HP laptops often need a driver for their Quick Launch buttons to function properly. Fingerprint readers, USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth, chipset, hard drive free-fall sensors, and SATA drivers are other common components (though specialized USB 3.0 and Bluetooth drivers should be rendered mostly unnecessary by Windows 8), and trackpad drivers (while sometimes not strictly necessary) can make trackpads more reliable and enable advanced functions. This is especially true of the multitouch trackpads shipping with most Ultrabooks.
Once your drivers are downloaded, copy them to a USB key for later. While you’ve got a functioning system, you may also want to grab a few other programs for installation once your fresh copy of Windows is up and running. Different workloads will require different software, of course, but this should get most general-use users off the ground:
Microsoft Security Essentials (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentials) for antivirus
An alternate Web browser like Chrome (http://https://www.google.com/chrome) or Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/?from=getfirefox)
A PDF reader like Acrobat Reader (http://get.adobe.com/reader/?promoid=BUIGO) or Foxit Reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/)
An office suite like Microsoft Office (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/buy) or LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/)
The Windows Live Essentials (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/essentials-home) add-ons, which include an email client and basic photo and video editors
Now that you’ve diligently done all of your prep work, the actual installation of Windows isn’t terribly difficult even if you’ve never done it before. Take the DVD or USB stick you made from the downloaded ISO, put it in (or connect it to) the computer, restart, and then boot from the install media rather than the hard drive—you may have to press a key to invoke the computer's boot menu (usually F12, but it can vary based on your specific machine).
The Windows install process is mostly straightforward, and you'll spend most of your time clicking "Next." The most complicated screen you'll see is the partitioning window, accessible when you elect to do a Custom install (which you should). In lieu of physical install media, most laptops are going to put their Windows restore files (crapware and all) on a separate partition of the hard drive.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-25-at-11.37.32-AM-640x484.png
Partition schemes like this one, common on new PCs, can reduce the amount of space you can use on your hard drive.
There are two schools of thought here: one contends that you should just format the partition Windows is currently installed to (usually the largest one), preserving the restore partition for future use just in case. The second, which I personally subscribe to, says you should delete all of the existing partitions on the drive and reclaim that hard drive space for your own use. The road you choose to travel depends on how much hard drive space you need and how much of a safety net you want to leave yourself—it should be noted that even if you preserve the existing recovery partition, the Windows installation process can render it nonfunctional. Choose carefully before proceeding.
The computer will install what it needs, reboot, and then boot into the “Out of Box Experience” (OOBE) mode, which helps you set up your user account, enter your product key, and a few other basic things. This is the same process you go through the first time you turn on a new computer. Enter all of your information and you'll eventually reach the Windows desktop—you're back on familiar ground, but you're still a few driver installations away from having a fully functional computer.
Next, get those drivers you downloaded earlier and start installing them—again, I’d start with graphics, network, and sound drivers and then fill in the rest of the gaps. The Device Manager is your friend here—for any device that still needs a driver, you’ll see a question mark under “Unknown devices” along with a vague, sometimes-helpful description of what that item is. Windows also has some generic terms like "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" and "High Definition Audio Device" that it uses when it doesn't quite know what something is.
If you’re still missing drivers post-install, you may have to resort to search engines. Right-click each unidentified device in the Device Manager, click Properties, go to the Details tab, and select Hardware IDs from the Property drop-down menu. You should see a list of a half-dozen or so alphanumeric hardware identifiers that you can plug into your search engine of choice to see what you find. The odds are good that if you can't figure out what something is, someone else has already been there and figured it out for you.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-25-at-11.59.39-AM-640x468.png
It's not the most streamlined solution, but searching for hardware IDs can be a helpful last resort if you can't find the right driver.
Once you’ve eliminated all the exclamation points in the Device Manager, your computer should be fully operational. Your next step is to connect it to your network and activate it—you can invoke the activation window from the System control panel, or from the system tray icon that will periodically nag you to take care of it.
Because of the SLP process we discussed earlier, the actual license key on the bottom of your computer has probably never actually been activated before—often, I'm able to activate Windows over the Internet without any trouble at all. If you can't do that, you'll have to use Microsoft's phone activation system, which isn't as onerous as it sounds—you just need to call the provided phone number, give Microsoft's automated phone system eight six-digit codes, and then enter the numbers it spits back at you.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/activation.jpg
Activating Windows 7 over the phone. In total, there will be nine six-digit numbers to give to Microsoft's automated system, which will give you a confirmation ID to type for activation.
You'll never talk to a real person, and the only question you have to answer is "how many computers have been activated with this copy of Windows?" The correct (and truthful, right?) answer is "one"—any other number will kick you out of the system before you get the activation codes you need. It's a boring process, but it only takes about 10 minutes total and you don't have to rely on third-party tools (http://directedge.us/content/abr-activation-backup-and-restore) to do it.
Once your drivers are installed and your copy of Windows is activated, you should go to Windows Update and grab all of the many, many updates needed by a fresh load of Windows.
Saving your work
You’ve installed your drivers and applications and you’ve activated and updated your copy of Windows—nice work! You could start using your computer as you normally would at this point, but there’s one last step I’d recommend unless you want to do this all over again from the beginning: you should make a backup image of your computer just in case you ever need to load a fresh copy of Windows on it again.
To preserve your hard work, we'll create a Windows image of your system by going to the Backup and Restore control panel. Click "Create a system image" in the left-hand sidebar, and you'll be able to back up a working copy of your entire Windows installation to an NTFS-formatted external drive, one or more blank DVDs, or (in the Professional and Ultimate editions) a network drive.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/systemimage-640x589.png
Creating a system image will preserve all of your hard work and save you from having to do this again.
Keep the disk or DVDs with this image stored on it intact. If you ever want to go back to your freshly loaded copy of Windows, pop in the Windows install media we burned earlier, and instead of "install now" click "repair your computer."
http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-25-at-11.40.43-AM.png
One button to install, one to run the repair tools. The repair tools will allow you to restore system backup images that you create, run a memory test, and a few other things.
Then click "Restore your computer using a system image that you created earlier" and, when prompted, hook up the external drive or insert the last DVD used in your backup set. Once the tool locates your image, it will restore everything just as it was. This will net you a fresh Windows install without having to start from square one as we did at the beginning of the guide.
This whole process will be made a little easier by Windows 8, which will include command line tools you can use to make system images for use with its new, streamlined Reset and Refresh functions. To talk about that before the operating system is finalized would be to get ahead of ourselves, but you can be sure we’ll talk about it a bit more as the next version of Windows nears release.
Conclusions
Installing a clean copy of Windows by yourself can be a long and arduous process, especially for the uninitiated—after going through this guide, you may well decide that Microsoft’s $99 asking price for its Signature program actually isn’t actually so outrageous after all. What's important to remember is that it's by no means impossible, and the presence of readily available install media and extensive guides like this one means that the process is actually easier (and less legally fraught) than it has been in the past. It's still a bit outside of some users' comfort zones, but anyone with a free Saturday and a do-it-yourself ethos can save that $99 for something else.
by Andrew Cunningham (http://arstechnica.com/author/andrew_cunningham/) - June 1 2012
(http://arstechnica.com/features/2012/06/blowing-away-bloatware-a-guide-to-reinstalling-windows-on-a-new-pc/?comments=1#comments-bar)
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/crapwaredesktop-640x480.jpg
Does your new PC's desktop look like this, or worse? It doesn't have to be this way!
We recently reported on a new service offered through Microsoft Stores: for $99, technicians will reinstall a clean copy of Windows on any new PC, wiping out all of the bloatware that shipped with the computer and installing a few basic productivity applications in their stead.
We ended up with nearly as many comments on that story as it had words. The discussions included whether $99 was a fair price for the service, alternatives to completely wiping out and reinstalling the operating system, and the reasons why PCs come with so much pre-installed software in the first place. Whichever side of these various arguments you came down on, the general consensus was that bloatware brings down the price of PCs—but is otherwise supremely terrible and should be nuked from orbit.
This guide aims to address all of these points in one big, sweeping go, both for home users and for smaller businesses without dedicated IT staff. People who have never tried this before will learn enough to be able to download Windows installation media, hunt down drivers, and reinstall their own operating system. Technical users who have done all of this before can pick up some information about how Windows installation media and the Windows activation process have changed since the Windows XP days. And everyone should come away with an idea of what goes into installing Windows from scratch on a new PC, and just what that $99 will pay for.
Before you start
For the purposes of our guide, we will begin with a new PC that has just been taken out of the box and hooked up for the first time. Before we get started, you're going to want to download a few things, so don't reformat that hard drive just yet—turn on the PC and walk through Windows' first-time setup process. All you need to do is get to the desktop, connect to the Internet, and fire up a Web browser. This guide isn't going to walk you through preserving any personal data on the PC you're reloading, so it would be best to not yet do anything on this computer you'll want to keep.
Getting Windows install media
After you've booted the PC to its bloatware-infested desktop and clicked through the various EULAs and pop-up boxes for software you'll never use, the first thing you're going to want to do is get a copy of the vanilla Windows install media—most new computers these days don't come with that sort of thing, and the restore functionality they do include is just going to restore all of the bloatware, too.
It used to be that getting Windows install media without actually buying a retail copy of Windows required you to visit less-than-legitimate sites and hope that whatever you downloaded wasn’t infested with viruses. No longer: you can now download your Windows media from Digital River, the company Microsoft uses to supply ISOs to people who buy Windows online. These downloads are identical to the “full install” versions of the Windows install media.
Windows 7 Install Media Download Links
Windows 7 Home Premium with SP1
32-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-58996.iso)
64-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-58997.iso)
Windows 7 Professional with SP1
32-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59183.iso)
64-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59186.iso)
Windows 7 Ultimate with SP1
32-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59463.iso)
64-bit (http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59465.iso)
You'll want to download the media for the same edition of Windows that came with the computer, so check the Windows sticker on the bottom or side of the computer or the System control panel to see what you've got. Most new consumer PCs will come with Windows 7 Home Premium, but Professional and Ultimate sometimes show up on mid- and high-end machines.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/windowsedition.png
Checking the Windows edition in the System control panel. You can also find this information printed on your Windows license sticker.
This should go without saying, but note that these downloads do not include a license or a product key to install Windows—you'll still need a valid "full install" or OEM license and product key to legally install Windows on anything. They are, however, a convenient way to get new install media if (1) your computer didn't come with generic Windows install media, as is almost always the case these days, (2) your original Windows media has become lost or damaged, or (3) you want to replace your old Windows install disc with one that has the latest Service Pack integrated already, especially useful since Microsoft has made the service pack slipstreaming process much more difficult since the XP days.
Once you’ve downloaded the ISO for your Windows edition and bit-ness, you can either burn it to a DVD using Windows 7's built-in DVD burning tool or copy it to a USB drive using Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool (http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool).
At this point, we run into one of the most common misconceptions about reinstalling a clean copy of Windows on a new computer: that install media bought in a store (or, in our case, downloaded from Digital River's servers) won't work with the OEM license key printed on the computer.
This was, in fact, true back in the days of Windows XP, and that operating system's longevity and popularity is why this belief persists—Microsoft's OEM partners are given special Windows media and license keys that are used to install Windows en masse on new PCs. This Windows media checks for a special string in a computer's BIOS to verify that the computer was from one of Microsoft's OEM partners, and would not require additional action to activate if that string was found. This whole process is called System Locked Pre-installation (SLP), and it's still in use today—for example, the Dell-branded Windows install media included with my Dell Latitude does not require activation after installation because it knows to check the BIOS for the requisite text string.
The difference is that the OEM versions of Windows XP install media would not accept a product key for an off-the-shelf copy of Windows even if that key was valid and vice-versa. Volume license customers had yet another variant of install media for use with their product keys (one of the reasons this whole mess existed was to prevent people from using leaked volume license keys for Windows XP Pro to activate commercially available install media). Getting around this limitation was possible if you were willing to copy your install media to your hard drive, fiddle with some of the files, and re-burn it, but this was a hit-or-miss procedure that didn't work consistently and was well out of most users' comfort zone.
Due in part to changes in Windows volume licensing, this is no longer the case. Retail Windows 7 DVDs will happily accept OEM license keys as long as you're using "full install" media rather than "upgrade" media. You may have to use Microsoft's phone-based activation process rather than the more convenient Internet activation, but there are no other technical roadblocks and there's nothing in Microsoft's EULA that prevents it as long as you're using the same edition of Windows and you're not using your OEM key to install Windows on multiple systems (Microsoft didn't respond to requests for clarification on the issue). You can even switch between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows if you'd like.
I’ve also been asked whether wiping out the installed copy of Windows will have any impact on the computer’s hardware warranty—the short answer is no. The warranty terms for all the major PC vendors (I checked HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, and Toshiba specifically, and a Lenovo representative confirmed for me) separate hardware and software pretty clearly, meaning that wiping out the factory-installed copy of Windows with a fresh copy (or even another OS) will invalidate any sort of software support provided by that computer’s manufacturer, but if the hardware fails within the warranty period they’re still obligated to fix the problem.
Downloading drivers and software
The next thing to do, and one of the most important, is download the drivers for your hardware. Doing this before installing our fresh copy of Windows on the computer isn’t necessary, but if you have the computer’s fully populated Device Manager window to guide you, it makes it much easier to identify and download the drivers you need.
For a broad overview of the Windows installation and driver hunting processes, this part of last year’s “How to build your own computer” feature is a great place to start. Since you’ll be installing Windows right off of the DVD with no extra drivers or customizations, the process will be identical to installing the OS on a computer you built yourself.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-25-at-10.30.31-AM-640x398.png (http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-25-at-10.30.31-AM.png)
A list of drivers on Dell's download site. Most manufacturers make it relatively easy to get the drivers you need. (http://cdn.arstechnica.net//wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-25-at-10.30.31-AM.png)
The good news is that OEM support pages are typically a bit easier to navigate than your average motherboard manufacturer’s, and it’s a bit simpler to remember and search for something like “Dell Latitude E6410” than “GA-H61N-USB3.” Dell (http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/DriversHome/NeedProductSelection), HP (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/siteHome?cc=us&lc=en), Lenovo (http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/default.page), Acer (http://support.acer.com/us/en/product/default.aspx), Toshiba (http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/home.jsp?nav=Download), ASUS (http://support.asus.com/Download/Options.aspx?SLanguage=en&type=1), and others all have pretty good support pages into which you can type your computer’s model name or serial number and operating system and get back all of the drivers you need for a new Windows install.
The three most important types of drivers you’ll need to get a clean Windows install off the ground are graphics (or video), networking (both wired and wireless), and sound (or audio), so make sure you grab those first. If there are multiple drivers available under each entry, you can check the Device Manager to see what kind of hardware you’re using, or you can just download all available drivers to make sure your bases are covered.
The other drivers you need will depend on the equipment installed in your computer, and this often varies from manufacturer to manufacturer—Lenovo laptops use a custom power management driver that you’ll need to look out for, and HP laptops often need a driver for their Quick Launch buttons to function properly. Fingerprint readers, USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth, chipset, hard drive free-fall sensors, and SATA drivers are other common components (though specialized USB 3.0 and Bluetooth drivers should be rendered mostly unnecessary by Windows 8), and trackpad drivers (while sometimes not strictly necessary) can make trackpads more reliable and enable advanced functions. This is especially true of the multitouch trackpads shipping with most Ultrabooks.
Once your drivers are downloaded, copy them to a USB key for later. While you’ve got a functioning system, you may also want to grab a few other programs for installation once your fresh copy of Windows is up and running. Different workloads will require different software, of course, but this should get most general-use users off the ground:
Microsoft Security Essentials (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/products/security-essentials) for antivirus
An alternate Web browser like Chrome (http://https://www.google.com/chrome) or Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/?from=getfirefox)
A PDF reader like Acrobat Reader (http://get.adobe.com/reader/?promoid=BUIGO) or Foxit Reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/)
An office suite like Microsoft Office (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/buy) or LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/)
The Windows Live Essentials (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/essentials-home) add-ons, which include an email client and basic photo and video editors
Now that you’ve diligently done all of your prep work, the actual installation of Windows isn’t terribly difficult even if you’ve never done it before. Take the DVD or USB stick you made from the downloaded ISO, put it in (or connect it to) the computer, restart, and then boot from the install media rather than the hard drive—you may have to press a key to invoke the computer's boot menu (usually F12, but it can vary based on your specific machine).
The Windows install process is mostly straightforward, and you'll spend most of your time clicking "Next." The most complicated screen you'll see is the partitioning window, accessible when you elect to do a Custom install (which you should). In lieu of physical install media, most laptops are going to put their Windows restore files (crapware and all) on a separate partition of the hard drive.
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Partition schemes like this one, common on new PCs, can reduce the amount of space you can use on your hard drive.
There are two schools of thought here: one contends that you should just format the partition Windows is currently installed to (usually the largest one), preserving the restore partition for future use just in case. The second, which I personally subscribe to, says you should delete all of the existing partitions on the drive and reclaim that hard drive space for your own use. The road you choose to travel depends on how much hard drive space you need and how much of a safety net you want to leave yourself—it should be noted that even if you preserve the existing recovery partition, the Windows installation process can render it nonfunctional. Choose carefully before proceeding.
The computer will install what it needs, reboot, and then boot into the “Out of Box Experience” (OOBE) mode, which helps you set up your user account, enter your product key, and a few other basic things. This is the same process you go through the first time you turn on a new computer. Enter all of your information and you'll eventually reach the Windows desktop—you're back on familiar ground, but you're still a few driver installations away from having a fully functional computer.
Next, get those drivers you downloaded earlier and start installing them—again, I’d start with graphics, network, and sound drivers and then fill in the rest of the gaps. The Device Manager is your friend here—for any device that still needs a driver, you’ll see a question mark under “Unknown devices” along with a vague, sometimes-helpful description of what that item is. Windows also has some generic terms like "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter" and "High Definition Audio Device" that it uses when it doesn't quite know what something is.
If you’re still missing drivers post-install, you may have to resort to search engines. Right-click each unidentified device in the Device Manager, click Properties, go to the Details tab, and select Hardware IDs from the Property drop-down menu. You should see a list of a half-dozen or so alphanumeric hardware identifiers that you can plug into your search engine of choice to see what you find. The odds are good that if you can't figure out what something is, someone else has already been there and figured it out for you.
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It's not the most streamlined solution, but searching for hardware IDs can be a helpful last resort if you can't find the right driver.
Once you’ve eliminated all the exclamation points in the Device Manager, your computer should be fully operational. Your next step is to connect it to your network and activate it—you can invoke the activation window from the System control panel, or from the system tray icon that will periodically nag you to take care of it.
Because of the SLP process we discussed earlier, the actual license key on the bottom of your computer has probably never actually been activated before—often, I'm able to activate Windows over the Internet without any trouble at all. If you can't do that, you'll have to use Microsoft's phone activation system, which isn't as onerous as it sounds—you just need to call the provided phone number, give Microsoft's automated phone system eight six-digit codes, and then enter the numbers it spits back at you.
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Activating Windows 7 over the phone. In total, there will be nine six-digit numbers to give to Microsoft's automated system, which will give you a confirmation ID to type for activation.
You'll never talk to a real person, and the only question you have to answer is "how many computers have been activated with this copy of Windows?" The correct (and truthful, right?) answer is "one"—any other number will kick you out of the system before you get the activation codes you need. It's a boring process, but it only takes about 10 minutes total and you don't have to rely on third-party tools (http://directedge.us/content/abr-activation-backup-and-restore) to do it.
Once your drivers are installed and your copy of Windows is activated, you should go to Windows Update and grab all of the many, many updates needed by a fresh load of Windows.
Saving your work
You’ve installed your drivers and applications and you’ve activated and updated your copy of Windows—nice work! You could start using your computer as you normally would at this point, but there’s one last step I’d recommend unless you want to do this all over again from the beginning: you should make a backup image of your computer just in case you ever need to load a fresh copy of Windows on it again.
To preserve your hard work, we'll create a Windows image of your system by going to the Backup and Restore control panel. Click "Create a system image" in the left-hand sidebar, and you'll be able to back up a working copy of your entire Windows installation to an NTFS-formatted external drive, one or more blank DVDs, or (in the Professional and Ultimate editions) a network drive.
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Creating a system image will preserve all of your hard work and save you from having to do this again.
Keep the disk or DVDs with this image stored on it intact. If you ever want to go back to your freshly loaded copy of Windows, pop in the Windows install media we burned earlier, and instead of "install now" click "repair your computer."
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One button to install, one to run the repair tools. The repair tools will allow you to restore system backup images that you create, run a memory test, and a few other things.
Then click "Restore your computer using a system image that you created earlier" and, when prompted, hook up the external drive or insert the last DVD used in your backup set. Once the tool locates your image, it will restore everything just as it was. This will net you a fresh Windows install without having to start from square one as we did at the beginning of the guide.
This whole process will be made a little easier by Windows 8, which will include command line tools you can use to make system images for use with its new, streamlined Reset and Refresh functions. To talk about that before the operating system is finalized would be to get ahead of ourselves, but you can be sure we’ll talk about it a bit more as the next version of Windows nears release.
Conclusions
Installing a clean copy of Windows by yourself can be a long and arduous process, especially for the uninitiated—after going through this guide, you may well decide that Microsoft’s $99 asking price for its Signature program actually isn’t actually so outrageous after all. What's important to remember is that it's by no means impossible, and the presence of readily available install media and extensive guides like this one means that the process is actually easier (and less legally fraught) than it has been in the past. It's still a bit outside of some users' comfort zones, but anyone with a free Saturday and a do-it-yourself ethos can save that $99 for something else.