time to replace components in wife's computer for dreaded Win10 to Win11

Drawback of clean installation: takes too much time and effort.
Advantage of clean installation: Better system performance, less useless applications you installed once and hardly used, most applications are updated to the newest version. Old 32-bit applications are replaced by the respective 64-bit version which (in theory) are faster.
Ancient Greeks said: "Ουδέν κακόν αμιγές καλού" (No bad situation is 100% bad, there is always a good side). The equivalent English expression is "every cloud has a silver lining".

Yep, it is a PITA to reinstall a few dozen applications, and many are still not done for me. I have the double-whammy since I have a new backup computer that has to get all this stuff installed as well!

I'm a clean installer, mostly because I have multiple machines I use for different test scenarios. I used to automate my own app installs, but I gutted all of that and moved all those scripts over to winget. I can install Windows in 5-6 minutes, and my apps take 12-15; most of that is Visual Studio. Put my two standard tweak scripts in place, and I'm off and running.

Well, I looked at WinGet, but couldn't figure out how to use it.

If all you need is free apps, such as Chrome, Libre Office, Xnview and others, you can go at www.ninite.com, check the boxes to select your apps and download the installer. Run it once to download and install the applications you chose. Run it after some days to automatically update them. Or download UniGetGUI to automatically run WinGet commands to update everything else. You can even ignore (exclude) the ones you want to manually update or never update.

spapakons said:

If all you need is free apps, such as Chrome, Libre Office, Xnview and others, you can go at www.ninite.com, check the boxes to select your apps and download the installer. Run it once to download and install the applications you chose. Run it after some days to automatically update them. Or download UniGetGUI to automatically run WinGet commands to update everything else. You can even ignore (exclude) the ones you want to manually update or never update.

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Well, that's the rub. I use NiNite for my installs and indeed I get all the free apps installed that way. However, I also have a lot of other stuff that NiNite doesn't support. I was trying to simply get WinGet, but that seemed to elude me as well.

Got the upgrade up (wife's computer, Win11 upgrade) and running for her computer. At some point she can decide if she wants a newer video card, it is all set to add a new one if she wants, she does not game. (was not happy with the Win11 issue with no booting off the Sata SSD she had. I ran copy clone from that to the new NVME M.2 2TB SSD. I have Coolermaster PC cases. Hers is a CM 912 pc case. Mine is a CM 932 HAF pc case.

spapakons said:

If all you need is free apps, such as Chrome, Libre Office, Xnview and others, you can go at www.ninite.com, check the boxes to select your apps and download the installer. Run it once to download and install the applications you chose. Run it after some days to automatically update them. Or download UniGetGUI to automatically run WinGet commands to update everything else. You can even ignore (exclude) the ones you want to manually update or never update.

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I like that idea, but didn't start from scratch, but that is great to know! I use winget. I started leaning that with Ubuntu.

Scannerman said:

If you already bought your good lady a brand new system board I can almost guarantee you that it will handle a 64 bit OS. Could it be that she just wants to keep her Win 10? Reason I'm asking is because my wife insists on keeping her Windows 10 with all her programs and games etc. I'm gently trying to persuade her to move over to Win 11 this fall. I have Windows 11 installed on her unit by means of multi-boot but she never uses it.

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no, she was happy to upgrade. because if i am gone she will have no clue about computers

retiredat44 said:

no, she was happy to upgrade. because if i am gone she will have no clue about computers

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Glad to hear it. I used the same reasoning before I installed Win 11 on my wife's PC. I think she'll be braver come this fall.

You can always customize Windows 11 to look more familiar, so as as more like Windows 10 or even 7. See the Personalization threads.

spapakons said:

You can always customize Windows 11 to look more familiar, so as as more like Windows 10 or even 7. See the Personalization threads.

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Where to look?

To get the familiar Windows 7 start menu, I use Open Shell. It can either leave the start button as it is or replace it with the custom one. To get the familiar Vista/7 start button (blue orb) I used a Windows 7 skin for Classic Shell (predecessor of Open Shell). To get the Windows Vista/7 gadgets I use 8gadgetpack up to version 37. The latest version 38 is completely different and only supports modern 64-bit "gadgets", not the proper 32-bit gadgets. Having installed 8gadgetpack you can also double-click and install any additional gadgets you might have from an old computer or download from the internet. To make the taskbar and File Explorer look more like Windows 10 (or 8 or 7) I use Explorer Patcher. To replace all the system icons with the respective ones from Windows 7 or 8.1, I used Customizer God and Resource Hacker. I first extracted all the icons from the respective Windows 7 and 8.1 system files and then I imported them to the Windows 11 system files:

C:\Windows\SystemResources\batmeter.dll.mun for the battery and power icons
C:\Windows\SystemResources\imageres.dll.mun for the majority of the system icons (folders, devices, Control Panel entries)
C:\Windows\SystemResources\SndVolSSO.dll.mun for the sound icons
C:\Windows\SystemResources\stobject.dll.mun for the USB safe removal icon
C:\Windows\System32\pnidui.dll for the network icons (Windows 10 and 11 up to 23H2 only)
C:\Program Files\ExplorerPatcher\pnidui.dll for the network icons (Windows 11 24H2, Taskbar style Windows 10 Explorer Patcher must be selected)

All these files in Windows 7 and 8.1 are in C:\Windows\System32 folder without the .mun extension.

I am doing it backwards, have win11 running on a non qualifying unit with no problems. See my sig. Going to upgrade to newer board, cpu and mems to be win 11 compliant, rest is coming over for hopefully a plug and play experience. Retail license....I have never really had a problem activating/reactivating since win 7 with all my hardware changes over the years, including the direct phone experience......

bldegle2 said:

I am doing it backwards, have win11 running on a non qualifying unit with no problems. See my sig. Going to upgrade to newer board, cpu and mems to be win 11 compliant, rest is coming over for hopefully a plug and play experience.

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I'm pretty much doing the same. I'm also keeping my older rigs while I upgrade to legitimate compatible hardware. It's a slow process because there are four other people on the home front who are all happy with Windows 10. I've introduced Win 11 to each of their PCs compliments of "uncle" Rufus. At least it's there in some shape or form for them when they're ready to try it out. So far only the youngest seems keen on learning Win 11.

History repeats itself. When Windows XP was new, we would prefer Windows 98. Vista was not good and deliberately more demanding than XP because Microsoft hoped we would replace our computers in order to run Vista. With Windows 7 they learned their lesson and made them lighter than Vista, the 32-bit version almost having the same performance at running XP on the same hardware. Of course we didn't like change, so we claimed that XP was better than 7. After Windows 8 and 10 were out, we would stick with Windows 7. Now that 10 is nearing EOL, we still hesitate to try Windows 11. I am sure if a newer version is out, such as Windows 12 sometime in the future, we would claim Windows 11 is better.

spapakons said:

History repeats itself. When Windows XP was new, we would prefer Windows 98. Vista was not good and deliberately more demanding than XP because Microsoft hoped we would replace our computers in order to run Vista. With Windows 7 they learned their lesson and made them lighter than Vista, the 32-bit version almost having the same performance at running XP on the same hardware. Of course we didn't like change, so we claimed that XP was better than 7. After Windows 8 and 10 were out, we would stick with Windows 7. Now that 10 is nearing EOL, we still hesitate to try Windows 11. I am sure if a newer version is out, such as Windows 12 sometime in the future, we would claim Windows 11 is better.

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History does indeed repeat itself. When ME came out most people agreed that it was deplorable and they were right. Even a noob like myself at the time had to concede that this was just too many BSOD and problems. My Boss' Win 98 never crashed nearly as much despite the inferior hardware he used. I was very reluctant to move on to Win XP because I heard so many complaining about it yet, when I finally did move on I was amazed at its stability, responsiveness, ease of use, and I really enjoyed the features. To this day I still think that Win XP was a better OS than ME or VISTA although to be fair, after SP 2.5 VISTA did become much more reliable and also had some good features.

VISTA laid out the ground work for Win 7. I heard and read so many good things about Win 7 that I approached it with confidence. I looked forward to the change. The only thing that set me back was the price. That was a hard pill to swallow. Win 7 was not cheap. Win 7 Ultimate was outrageously expensive. I was not that averse to the changes that Win 7 made although I did miss some of the features from VISTA SP 2.5. Although, perhaps not quite as stable as XP, issues in Win 7 were generally easy to fix: BSODs and crashes were not nearly as common as they were with VISTA and Win ME. To be fair, this was my own personal experience and by this time I was well familiarized with PCs to the point of taking them apart and putting them back together. Win7 offered us many things that Win XP could not but it came with a price and that was my only reluctance at the time.

Win 8 (not Win 8.1 which should have been called WINDOWS NINE) was a complete and outright disaster. It was likely worse than Win ME and that's saying a lot. Of course it wasn't long before 8.1 came out and many people aren't aware that the architecture for Win 8.1 was more different than Win 8 than the difference in architecture between Win VISTA and Win 7. This is a fact that seems to be conveniently hidden from most Windows users. My personal take on this is simple: Win 8 was designed to be a tablet OS and Microsoft tried to make it a one size fits all. It failed miserably. 8.1 (should have been NINE) was more of a consolation for Win 8 than anything else. In time it continued to improve, but in many ways it could not compete with its predecessor and IMO that is the main reason so many people stayed with Win 7. I did both. I kept Win 7 and used Win 8 as a novelty. I jumped on 8.1 as soon as possible and got familiarized with it so I could pass it onto my reluctant family members. To this day I'm still glad I kept my Win 7 and some of my family are too.

I never claimed that Win XP was better than Win7 but it did have some qualities that Win7 did not. Overall, I think Win 7 came out on top. I was really hoping that Windows 10 would be a vast improvement but in fact I was so disappointed with it that I never bothered to put it on my work station except once to make the immediate upgrade to Win 11. Even that crashed and burned so I had to make a fresh install of Win 11. Windows 10 is alright once you get rid of all the invasive garbage, but there's so much garbage to remove from a standard Windows 10 installation that it hardly seems worth the trouble. Others were well aware of this and, consequently, they still stayed with Win 7. I don't blame them. IMO Windows 7 still reigns supreme over Win 8, Win 8.1, and Win 10.

I seriously hope Windows 12 proves to be better than what we have with 11. I'm not holding my breath given Windows past performance. I'm old and I don't think that it matters so much anymore as I will likely be able to log on and connect to the internet with whatever I'm using before I leave this world. After Win 7 Microsoft fired its beta testers. Today we get to pay Microsoft to beta test their experiments for them. We are the guinea pigs. One of the first things that I stated upon joining this Windows 11 forum was that I was not impressed with Windows 11. For me, that really hasn't changed.

Recently this switch to 24H2 has caused me to raise an eyebrow. After all the begging and pleading and clawing and scraping and knocking myself out to get the thing to function properly on my "Windows 11 Ready" platform the effort is starting to hint at resulting in a half decent operating system on my 'new' build. Yes, you heard it here. I'm not saying that I'm impressed yet. I've been ready to be impressed from the git go. I know people have been having a lot of issues with this 24H2 and I'm no exception. There are still things about it I don't like and I can only hope that I find a way that I can dual boot to Linux with it without issue at some point because "Other OS" isn't working out so well in my UEFI/BIOS. That said, I'm no longer having any TBMT issues with my Intel chip, everything in my device manager looks fine, the system is fast and responsive, not cluttered, not sluggish, not full of bloatware, very streamlined, and behaving itself. So, perhaps Microsoft is actually listening to the feedback. Perhaps there is hope for Win 11 after all. Only time will tell. Perhaps one day I will be able to say in good conscience that I'm impressed. I look forward to that day. Let's just hope that the light at the end of the tunnel isn't just an oncoming train.

Scannerman said:

I'm old and I don't think that it matters so much anymore as I will likely be able to log on and connect to the internet with whatever I'm using before I leave this world.
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I hope that you (and I and probably others on this forum) all live long enough to see a Windows 12 that is a genuine improvement over Windows 11. No forced ads, less bloat or Settings option to remove it all easily, and with the same hardware requirements as Win 11. No, I haven't been doing drugs while writing this reply.

x509,
Microsoft don't go backwards, can't see V12 being as good as you say.

I ran Win10 for years, after I removed all the crap, I was quite happy with it. OTOH, it did seem to want to be reinstalled every couple years. After several years, Win10 would start to get really slow, and finally many times it would just never come back from sleep. At that point, I'd have to smack the reset button and reboot, something that was pretty annoying at times. I'm hoping Win11 is more stable, but so far I'm not sure it will be.