[GUIDE] How to install Windows 10 cleanly

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aphanic
aphanic Member Posts: 959 Seasoned Specialist WiFi Icon
edited October 2023 in 2020 Archives
DISCLAIMER: This is by no means the best way to do it, just one I like. There are several other ways to go about solving problems without resorting to clean installing (like the Alt+F10 procedure Acer system ship with), but if you are willing to reinstall everything, or it just tickles your fancy; carry on.
  1. First things first, things we'll need for the procedure:
    - An 8GB+ USB stick, that's where the installation files and drivers will reside.
    - A Windows 10 image, or installation media. For the purpose of this guide I'm going to be using the official Media Creation Tool to download and copy the required files.
    - Double Driver, it's a little (and old) utility to handle drivers. We'll be using it to make a backup of the ones the system has already, if one can access the system that is.

  2. Acquiring the media:

    Download and run the tool and proceed through its wizard style dialogs to create the bootable media. Have the USB flash drive inserted into the machine so it can copy it directly. Alternatively, download an ISO image and use something like Rufus to create a bootable USB stick later on ;).

    The architecture you're looking for when asked in one of the steps should be set automatically, but it's likely 64-bit.













  3. After the process, that USB stick will contain Windows installation files, but we'll be adding to it several things.

    For one, depending on your system (whether it's Intel based or AMD) you'll want the storage drivers to be installed from the beginning of the procedure. For Intel they're called Intel RST and can be downloaded either from the support page of your machine model or from Intel's Download Center. As for AMD, traditionally their SATA implementation didn't require specific drivers, but I don't know how things are on Ryzen 3000 and 4000 systems yet.

    By the way, if your system has an Optane module accelerator RST is going to be mandatory, but we'll get there in the end. There are 2 packages, we'll need them both. Extract the one for the installation in a folder inside the USB stick and copy the other one as is, I chose "drivers/RST" for simplicity:



    Now is where Double Driver comes in handy if one has access to the original system. There are drivers that come already with Windows, and some components have inbox drivers present that then get overwritten by Windows Update. What we're interested in are the WiFi (or Ethernet) ones, just in case the card was finicky and there were no drivers by default in a fresh Windows installation; I don't know about you but I'd like to connect to the net after I'm done.

    Open the program and you'll see some drivers are selected by default, those are the ones that didn't come with Windows. If you which one is your network adapter, you can select only that; but if you don't keeping the defaults is fine too.

    Choose to back them up in another folder inside the stick, Double Driver creates a folder structure so if you're like me and used a "drivers" folder before just point to that:





  4. And now the fun begins! Access the firmware settings of your machine by pressing F2 repeatedly when booting and ensure 2 things:
    - The default SATA operation mode. If you have an Optane module it must be RST with Optane, AHCI is the older standard. NOTE: To access that setting you may need to press Ctrl+S in the Main tab.
    - The boot menu is enabled. We'll be booting from the USB stick instead, so that needs to be enabled.
    - As for Legacy vs UEFI, it's dealer's choice. UEFI is more modern and the current standard to be fair and in newer systems there may not be any other option.



    When the settings are right, save them and reboot. Then press F12 until the boot manager is presented and choose the USB stick that was just created:



  5. You'll be presented with the Windows installation in a possibly huge manner, don't fret, it's because at this point of the installation the graphical drivers aren't installed yet.

    If your machine came with Windows, the appropriate version will already be selected (actually, you may not even see the selection screen), otherwise you'll be asked for the key. You don't have to enter it now, it can be skipped.





  6. Next order or business, custom install all the way. And now 2 things can happen:
    - You see no drive, nowhere to install to: that happens if we need to load the driver we downloaded before (e.g. RST).
    - You see the current partitions of the disk, which means an inbox driver is already provided.

    In any case, this is the stage in which I like to load the storage driver, just click on "Load driver" and point to the drivers folder we had previously created. The appropriate driver, if any, will be selected automatically:







  7. After you're brought up to the previous window, delete every partition you see. Yep, that's it, we want a clean install, so everything must go. Windows will create the appropriate set of partitions depending on the boot architecture (legacy or UEFI).

    NOTE: Optane users are in for a treat, because Intel or Microsoft didn't test things properly, the Optane configuration utility may throw an error later on about not being able to resize the last partition of the disk to create metadata. If that is your case, you'll need to delete the last partition (the recovery one) and switch to a recovery in main partition scheme, or disable recovery altogether (which doesn't sound right, does it?)

    Then click on the empty space, and click "Next". The first stage of the Windows installation will begin and a reboot will come next. After a couple of reboots you'll be presented by the OOBE, the out-of-the-box experience.

  8. Now you have a series of choices and settings to go through. It's pretty much a personal choice, but I like to not connect to the Internet just yet, I'd rather use a local account (at least at first). When you're done you'll be greeted with your new desktop:







  9. Now is where we could deal with the Optane acceleration if your system has it, run the RST installation and enable Optane (or run into the error I mentioned earlier). I didn't have any Optane module in my machine because I was already using an SSD so that's what it reads.

    NOTE: AMD users need nothing of this sort, they can skip to step 10.



  10. If you weren't presented with the option to connect to a WiFi network, and you have a laptop with a WiFi card, it's likely that your card requires a driver that's not provided by Windows. Here is where the Double Driver backup comes in handy.

    Open the Device Manager (for example by typing it in the Start menu, or selecting it from the Win+X menu) and see if there's any yellow triangle-labeled item on the list with a name similar to "Network adapter". Disregard the rest of the yellow triangles for now.

    If there's any, right click it and choose to update its drivers:





    Browse to the "drivers" folder in the USB stick and let it do its thing, after that you should be able to connect to your network if you weren't before.

  11. Last but certainly not least, Windows Update. After you're connected to the Internet run Windows Update. It will not only install the latest cumulative update but also drivers for those yellow triangle devices. You'll need to reboot the machine most likely, but afterwards you'll have a cleanly installed Windows 10 system on your machine!



  12. A couple of things remain, first make sure there are no devices in the Device Manager that display a yellow triangle. If there are, those don't have drivers available in Microsoft's Catalog and you'll need to download them from the support page or use one of those driver update utilities, like Driver Easy for example.

    Another important thing for laptops is installing the app that controls keyboard shortcuts, which is called Quick Access in Acer systems. You can download it from your support page, but here's a quick link just in case: v3.0.3010.

    And that's it, install anything you like at this point and enjoy your new system! Some apps I find useful would be FastStone Capture (paid), Hard Disk Sentinel (paid), HWiNFO, Macrium Reflect, MPC-BE, Notepad3, Paint.NET, Search Everything, Space Sniffer, SumatraPDF or Tresorit, for example. Give some a try, you may find one that suits you ;)

By the way, activation, you should already be activated upon installing if your machine came with Windows preinstalled, but if you were activated with a digital license before, or if you entered a key during setup, you'd have been activated as soon as you connected to the Internet.

Best Answers

  • aphanic
    aphanic Member Posts: 959 Seasoned Specialist WiFi Icon
    edited July 2020 Answer ✓
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    EXTRA: If you need to relocate the recovery image, whether you want you want to get rid of the recovery partition or you must, follow these steps to get it done. I must say I can't possibly recommend this unless you want to have a single partition system, or you need it for Optane. Having the recovery image separate is a good idea.
    1. Mount the recovery partition. We'll be using DiskPart for that, open a PowerShell or Command Prompt as an administrator, for example by pressing Win+X to bring up the right click menu of Start and then launching it from there:



    2. These are some basic commands:
      - list disk: shows the disks in the system.
      - list part: shows partitions of the selected disk.
      - sel disk/part: selects a disk or partition.
      - assign letter=X: assigns a letter to that partition.

      It's likely that the partition numbers are the same in your system, but, double check that we're selecting the recovery partition just in case ;)

      The highlighted areas are generally things one needs to type:



    3. After that, the recovery partition is mounted in the letter R. Now we need to copy the recovery image to a folder in the C drive (the operating system drive in this case), so we create it, copy the file, disable the use of the one in the partition and direct Windows to use the copy when necessary:



    4. Finally we need to remove access to the recovery partition and delete it, for which we'll use DiskPart again:



    5. And that's it, the recovery partition is no more and the system will use the new location instead
    Enabling Optane now shouldn't give you any problem by the way, after all the last partition of the disk is now the main one and there's plenty of space in there (plus some 500MB we freed up from deleting the recovery partition).
  • aphanic
    aphanic Member Posts: 959 Seasoned Specialist WiFi Icon
    Answer ✓
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    Same thing in PDF format, in case anyone finds something like that more useful to read through their phones while doing it:

    Cleanly install Windows 10

Answers

  • aphanic
    aphanic Member Posts: 959 Seasoned Specialist WiFi Icon
    edited July 2020 Answer ✓
    Options
    EXTRA: If you need to relocate the recovery image, whether you want you want to get rid of the recovery partition or you must, follow these steps to get it done. I must say I can't possibly recommend this unless you want to have a single partition system, or you need it for Optane. Having the recovery image separate is a good idea.
    1. Mount the recovery partition. We'll be using DiskPart for that, open a PowerShell or Command Prompt as an administrator, for example by pressing Win+X to bring up the right click menu of Start and then launching it from there:



    2. These are some basic commands:
      - list disk: shows the disks in the system.
      - list part: shows partitions of the selected disk.
      - sel disk/part: selects a disk or partition.
      - assign letter=X: assigns a letter to that partition.

      It's likely that the partition numbers are the same in your system, but, double check that we're selecting the recovery partition just in case ;)

      The highlighted areas are generally things one needs to type:



    3. After that, the recovery partition is mounted in the letter R. Now we need to copy the recovery image to a folder in the C drive (the operating system drive in this case), so we create it, copy the file, disable the use of the one in the partition and direct Windows to use the copy when necessary:



    4. Finally we need to remove access to the recovery partition and delete it, for which we'll use DiskPart again:



    5. And that's it, the recovery partition is no more and the system will use the new location instead
    Enabling Optane now shouldn't give you any problem by the way, after all the last partition of the disk is now the main one and there's plenty of space in there (plus some 500MB we freed up from deleting the recovery partition).
  • Commodore_1995#
    Commodore_1995# ACE Posts: 97,747 Trailblazer
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    I liked the topic. I have also already installed the chipset drivers, using the .inf file, when installing windows 10. Now, it would be interesting to try to integrate the intel rapid storage drivers with the windows iso. I've already managed to do this integration, but only using the video card and wireless network card drivers.
    Oi! Eu não sou sou a cortana! Mas estou aqui para ajudar! Hi! I'm not the cortana! But I'm here to help!
    Se você gostou da minha resposta, marque como solução clicando em sim! If you liked my answer, mark it as a solution by clicking on yes!
    Aceite somente a resposta que ajudou a solucionar o seu problema! Please accept only the response that helped to solve your problem!
    Detection tool click here to find the serial number or partnumber of your model!                                                          

               
      egydiocoelho Trailblazer
     
    ProductKey clique aqui para descobrir o serial do windows! click here to discover the windows serial!
    Para usuários da comunidade inglesa, espanhola, francesa e alemã, usarei o google tradutor! :)
    For users of the English, Spanish, French and German community, I will be using google translator! :) 
  • aphanic
    aphanic Member Posts: 959 Seasoned Specialist WiFi Icon
    edited July 2020
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    egydiocoelho said:
    I liked the topic. I have also already installed the chipset drivers, using the .inf file, when installing windows 10. Now, it would be interesting to try to integrate the intel rapid storage drivers with the windows iso. I've already managed to do this integration, but only using the video card and wireless network card drivers.

    I also use the chipset drivers, but they are merely blank placeholders to remove the yellow triangles :).

    As for integrating RST into the Windows image, it's actually easy! But I meant this to be more or less an easy approach so everyone can follow it. To integrate RST and may other drivers you need to mount the boot and Windows images using DISM beforehand. The problem is that you'd need to use an image of Windows that wasn't obtained using the Media Creation Tool, or then decrypt the Windows image, because it downloads them as ESD instead of WIM.

    For example, this would integrate RST into the first index of the image in an installation media (regular, not ESD):

    1. Open an administrative Command Prompt or PowerShell window.
    2. First you create a temporary folder where to mount the image.
    3. Mount it, selecting the index you want because there are usually several editions included, use this to find out:



    4. Integrate the driver, or drivers you want.
    5. Unmount it and commit the changes.
    You'd may want to do it for the 2nd index of "sources\boot.wim" as well, that one is the one for the first stage of the Windows setup. Interestingly, the only drivers I tend not to integrate are the DCH ones (broadly speaking, audio and video) haha.

    This would be an example of the output along with the needed commands:


  • aphanic
    aphanic Member Posts: 959 Seasoned Specialist WiFi Icon
    Answer ✓
    Options
    Same thing in PDF format, in case anyone finds something like that more useful to read through their phones while doing it:

    Cleanly install Windows 10
  • Commodore_1995#
    Commodore_1995# ACE Posts: 97,747 Trailblazer
    Options
    @aphanicCan I use your file to help other users?
    Oi! Eu não sou sou a cortana! Mas estou aqui para ajudar! Hi! I'm not the cortana! But I'm here to help!
    Se você gostou da minha resposta, marque como solução clicando em sim! If you liked my answer, mark it as a solution by clicking on yes!
    Aceite somente a resposta que ajudou a solucionar o seu problema! Please accept only the response that helped to solve your problem!
    Detection tool click here to find the serial number or partnumber of your model!                                                          

               
      egydiocoelho Trailblazer
     
    ProductKey clique aqui para descobrir o serial do windows! click here to discover the windows serial!
    Para usuários da comunidade inglesa, espanhola, francesa e alemã, usarei o google tradutor! :)
    For users of the English, Spanish, French and German community, I will be using google translator! :) 
  • aphanic
    aphanic Member Posts: 959 Seasoned Specialist WiFi Icon
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    egydiocoelho said:
    @aphanicCan I use your file to help other users?

    Of course! I wrote the thread as a way to have something we could point to should anyone ask, makes things easier having pictures and all.

    I did some proofreading for the PDF though haha, it's too bad you can't edit past a certain timeline :D
  • BummyNitro5
    BummyNitro5 Member Posts: 2 New User
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    I just wanted to let you know how great this tutorial was, i am on a nitro 5 and this was the only online tutorial that ive found that actually lets people know if they have an RST premium and Optane you must downloand the RST setup onto flash drive before running Windows Setup... YOU LITERALLY SAVED ME THOUSANDS CUS I WAS READY TO GO BUY A NEW PC.  please add nitro series to this guide because it will seriously be a blessing for us nitro users, thank you much!

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