Everything was peachy; my laptop was up-to-date, ready for the LAN party. Preparation wins the day!
But who wants an easy life? I needed a working laptop in a few, short hours. Time to install Windows 10 on a clean, new hard-drive!It may not have been my smartest move so I kept the old hard-disk in case things went pear-shaped; it’s always nice to be up against the clock (even if the emergency was completely my own choice 🙂 )
I’d recently made a script to keep track of time so I made use of it after I installed the new hard disk. Here’s how it went!
10.45 Boot laptop with USB Windows 10 image
10.47 Choose the disk to install to and the language
10.48 First auto-reboot
10.55 Second auto-reboot
10.57 Finish customising the initial settings and tweak some privacy settings
11.03 Third reboot
11.05 Set up a local administrator account and configure some apps
11.08 First login!
11.10 Turn off all the easy privacy-invasion stuff in settings, Edge and Cortana
11.12 Remap CDRom and USB stick drive letters, remap old D: drive back to D:
11.15 Change download location and download Firefox -install it and change default browser
11.18 Change the default power settings to high (gaming laptop) when it’s plugged in and remove the hibernation file (powercfg.exe -h off)
11.30 Activate Windows and install Office 365 (not configured yet, still logged in as admin) then download and install Steam – create a personal user account
11.35 Login as me and download Battlenet client, then login to Steam (confirm via email) and connect to Office 365 – activate Office, rename system and reboot
11.42 Run through more updates before and after reboot, login as me, start Outlook, Steam and BattleNet and get all the downloads going!
There you are. A workable Windows 10 machine in less than an hour. All the Steam and BattleNet downloads took a long time but I got access to the Internet, Office 365 and any games I prioritised. Job done!
Herring's Fishbait 