PC Reinstall

[BruEsp]

Hi everyone,
Please bear with my newbie question... I have a PC I got from PCSpecialist about 10 years ago. One of my sons is now going to be using it, but we'd like to do a complete reinstall of the machine, so that he can have a fresh start - as close to a "new machine" as possible. There are no files that we might require (or rather, there will be a few, which we can backup first; we can reinstall all other apps and programs afterwards)
What's the best way to do this? Would it be to create a Windows 11 Installation Media from Microsoft's website, put that on a USB drive, boot from it, then run the installation process, deleting any partitions (then letting Windows create a new one if needed), etc? Am I right in thinking that I should not need a Windows key, as it should be assigned to my PC BIOS?
Thanks for the help!
Kind regards,
Bruno

 

[Ekans2011]

Can you please post the full specs from your orders page?

N.B. Before installing windows 11 on old PC make sure your old rig meets the minimum system requirements for it.

About the clean install, here's @Martinr36 guide for it.

W11 clean install instructions

Download a new copy of Windows using the (Second option on linked page) to an 8GB (min) USB. Media Creation Tool
Boot that USB and choose a Custom Install.
Delete all UEFI partitions on the system drive (EFI System, Recovery, MSR Reserved, Primary).
Select the unallocated space that results and click the Next button. The installer will create the correct partitions and install Windows.
Run Windows Update repeatedly, even across reboots, until no more updates are found.
You may need/want to download and install the latest graphics driver from the Nvidia/AMD website (they change so regularly the latest version isn't always in the Windows libraries).
This is also worth a watch

 

[davhun]

Hi everyone,
Please bear with my newbie question... I have a PC I got from PCSpecialist about 10 years ago. One of my sons is now going to be using it, but we'd like to do a complete reinstall of the machine, so that he can have a fresh start - as close to a "new machine" as possible. There are no files that we might require (or rather, there will be a few, which we can backup first; we can reinstall all other apps and programs afterwards)
What's the best way to do this? Would it be to create a Windows 11 Installation Media from Microsoft's website, put that on a USB drive, boot from it, then run the installation process, deleting any partitions (then letting Windows create a new one if needed), etc? Am I right in thinking that I should not need a Windows key, as it should be assigned to my PC BIOS?
Thanks for the help!
Kind regards,
Bruno

You will not be able to install Windows 11 on a 10 year old Pc. I assume you now have W10 on it but even that will be phased out soon from a new updates point of view. For the time being, by all means reinstall Windows 10 as you are suggesting. The key is in the bios.
I wish your son the best of luck.

 

[SpyderTracks]

If it's a Windows 10 pc that doesn't have fTPM compatibility you'd need to reinstall windows 10

Windows 11 requires TPM at a hardware / firmware level to install and run. This is both required on the CPU and the motherboard, ie if the motherboard supports it but the CPU doesn't, it still won't work.

Windows processor requirements Windows 11 supported Intel processors

This specification details the Intel processors that can be used with Windows 11 customer systems that include Windows products, including custom images.

learn.microsoft.com

Windows processor requirements Windows 11 supported AMD processors

This specification details the AMD processors that can be used with Windows 11 customer systems that include Windows products, including custom images.

learn.microsoft.com

Download Windows 10 Disc Image (ISO File)Microsofthttps://www.microsoft.com › software-download › wind...

Be aware that Windows 10 is out of support in October this year, so won't receive any further security updates. Using an out of support OS connected to the web is extremely risky, just be sure you understand the risks

Obsolete products

Reducing the risks from using out of date smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop PCs, appliances or software applications

www.ncsc.gov.uk

And this is the very real worst case scenario of using an end of life OS that was realised in 2017, it's coming from a business perspective, but obviously home users were affected also and it did infect Windows 7 machines that weren't up to date with the required preventative patch. If this machine were to get infected with a worm while connected on the home network, if quite heavy firewall rules weren't in place restricting it's connection to other machines on the home network, they would likely be compromised also. This is also how hackers can gain access through an unsupported PC onto the rest of the network.

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/security/ransomware/wannacry-ransomware/

Just to make it clear, whenever a user visits a web page, the first thing that site does is request what's called the "user agent" of that machine, this includes the browser being used, what kind of engine, and also what OS, this is how hackers can tell exactly if your machine is worth targeting, if it's out of support and there's a known vulnerability, gaining access is easy

This site shows what your particular machine displays as its user agent so you can get an idea of how the web will know you're exposed. If you land on a hostile web site and it reads your user agent and recognises a security hole, just off that broadcasted user agent, the site can automatically trigger a targeted download through the security flaw. A lot of people don't realise with how SEO is done these days, a lot of sponsored links in google for instance are hostile web sites, simply because they've paid to be promoted, or have an SEO signature that has elevated them to that level.

What is my user agent?

Every request your web browser makes includes your User Agent; find out what your browser is sending and what this identifies your system as.

www.whatismybrowser.com