Preferred order when re-installing apps

gunrunnerjohn said:

What about applications that virtually always generously sprinkle stuff into the Registry? How do you deal with those?

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That's mostly a symptom of installing apps from the Microsoft Store, XBox Live, and other overly intrusive entities like Adobe and Google. I never buy any game that can't be played entirely offline, the only exception being X-Plane, and that gets reactivated with a batch file, too.

DJNelson said:

That's mostly a symptom of installing apps from the Microsoft Store, XBox Live, and other overly intrusive entities like Adobe and Google. I never buy any game that can't be played entirely offline, the only exception being X-Plane, and that gets reactivated with a batch file, too.

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Not really. I use 3D modeling software, 3D printer software, PCB design tools, all of them install lots of stuff in the Registry. Microsoft office does that as well. AAMOF, most regular applications have registry entries.

I'm not a gamer, so the fact that you can do that with games doesn't impress me since it doesn't apply to me.

gunrunnerjohn said:

I'm not a gamer, so the fact that you can do that with games doesn't impress me since it doesn't apply to me.

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You think I'm trying to impress you? Get over yourself.

DJNelson said:

There are people who can go for years without ever having to reinstall windows, but I've never been one of them. In the future, you can significantly reduce the time it takes to reinstall apps after a clean install of windows by installing all of them on a drive separate from windows. Almost all of your app data and files can be restored from copies of the USERS folder and the hidden ProgramData folders. I never install anything except drivers and their related software to the default program files folders, because those will have to be reinstalled when (not if) Windows breaks itself again.

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Way back in the 95/98/ME/XP/2000 days it seemed like I had to reinstall Windows every handful of months. But to be fair, I tinkered way more back then and I used software that was obtained from gosh knows where.

With Windows 10/11...i don't have any of these problems. On Windows 10 gaming PC (which I just upgraded to 11), I installed it in around Jan of 2021 and i've never reinstalled Windows on it. It runs absolutely great. But when I want to test out things, i always do it in a virtual machine and keep the cruft off my actual PC.

When I did install regularly, I used to
1). Load OS
2). Drivers until Device Manager Clean
3). Windows update till done.
4). Take an image, call this vanilla image.

DJNelson said:

You think I'm trying to impress you? Get over yourself.

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Try to keep up. You're claiming you can install Windows without affecting applications on another drive and just start using them. You clearly have a very limited type of application if that works for you. Most common applications have plenty of ties to the Windows registry, otherwise it would be dirt simple to reinstall Windows for anyone!

WTH, During the process of....
install apps, backup, restart
Computer failed to bot again with a different error.
Checked drvies, RAM, no problems
Tried the recovery, kbd/mouse still dont work, that was useless
Same with the built-in recovery, useless when kbd doesnt work
Had to create a new image, that works, just to confirm the backup recovery drive also works.
Entered a bunch of commands and it booted