Installing a new version of Windows 10

I have two types of machines in my work life. My personal machine that I use on the daily to do my work, and those that I have for road editing. This article is about the latter. We have been on the road on and off for about 9 months and it is time to freshen these machines up.

Since Microsoft has been busy doing updates, I like to use this opportunity to clean up the machines and start over.

First thing you need to do is backup anything you care about. In my case, I don’t care about anything on these machines, so I’m going to get right into loading a fresh version of Windows 10 1903.

Go get the Windows software here, select the “Download tool now” and create a USB drive for the install process. It will walk you through the process. Make sure you have a blank USB drive to use. I normally use a 16GB flash drive for this process.

Once you boot into this drive Windows will install. You may have old partitions, I generally delete them at this point, and then let Windows do its thing.

I also create a local account for this process. Windows will push hard for you to use a Microsoft Account, but you can do this later if you like.

Once Windows is installed and the machine is rebooted, go get updates. Hit the Windows Key and type “update” and “Check for updates” will show up. Select that and have Windows update.

Keep doing the last step until there are no more updates. This can take a little time, but get them, and keep getting them until it is done. In this process, Microsoft will likely load some old drivers you won’t want, and since this is for an edit rig we need to make sure graphic drives are all up to date before installing any Adobe software.

My machine required three reboots and updates, but you may require more or less depending.

Now let’s update our Intel drivers. Intel has a wonderful tool that makes this easy. I wish every computer company would do this, so that we wouldn’t need to figure out what we need for installs. Do a search in your web browser for “Intel Driver Update Utility.” Select “Intel® Driver & Support Assistant (Intel® DSA)” and then select “Download Now” from that page.

Download the program. Launch it. Agree to license terms. Hit Install. After install it will ask you to Launch. Go ahead. Tell it what browser you want to use. I like the new Chromium Edge (ChrEdge) but pick what you like. Now the magic happens. The tool goes off, looks at your hardware and tells you what needs to be updated. In my case my HD Graphics 530 card needs an update. Hit “Download all updates.” Spend a little time looking at this page. It tells you all sorts of information about your computer. Good info, if you don’t know what you are working with.

I had a minor glitch with my update. So I rebooted and went back to the Intel page and installed the graphics driver by selecting update by the graphics card. It did the install and then asked me to reboot. Like the Windows update go back to the Intel Driver & Support Assistant page and make sure you see the green bar that says “Your Intel software is up to date.”

We have a fresh updated Windows, and we have updated Intel drivers. I saw that an NVIDIA driver was getting loaded, and it was from 2018. Let’s get a new driver. Now if you aren’t sure what graphics card you have, the Intel Assistant will tell you. In my case it is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060. Let’s update it.

In your browser search for “NVIDIA Drivers” and you will get a link to the NVIDIA Driver page. Make sure it is NVIDIA and not some third party.

Fill out the Driver Download form and hit search. The search will provide you the latest drivers from NVIDIA. I did select the Studio Version of the driver, but this is your choice. Click download and install the latest driver. I normally just install the driver and then express install.

Now it is time for Adobe. Log in to Adobe.com, Download the Adobe CC Desktop application, and then install the apps you want.

After all this you will have a nice fresh, fully updated Windows 10 system ready to go for another season of road warrior editing.

One final note. Many laptops have software/utilities that come from the manufacturer. I have decided to avoid using those apps since in most cases they seem to lack support on a regular basis. Microsoft is doing a great job of figuring out what is in your system and loading the appropriate driver. That’s good enough for me.