Fresh Win11 Install ... A blow by blow encounter?

RuffHi · Jan 17, 2023

TechnoMage2021 said:
I use an ISO that was pre-conditioned with Rufus, to eliminate most of the pain of the install.

TM

That is what I ended up doing ... with my ethernet cable pulled just in case.

I have a kvm switch so I can jump between my Win 10 and Win 11 machine. Both on the same home network so copying some things like ShutDown icons between the two is easy.

Still some basic house keeping stuff to do (user folders) and then the fun really starts ... getting Win 11 to where I am with Win 10 (backups, rainmeter, aquacomputer info, etc, etc.

RuffHi · Jan 18, 2023

I now have Win 10 on one NVMe and Win 11 on another, separate NVMe. I can boot to either using the motherboard F11 boot option ... but I can't seem to get / repair the boot manager (bootrec / bcd) doesn't seem to do the trick.

Is there a 3rd party boot controller that is a) easy to use, b) understand, c) other?

SIW2 · Jan 19, 2023

what are you trying to do ?

Scott · Jan 19, 2023

I think he wants a boot menu, something like this

RuffHi · Jan 19, 2023

Yes ... dual boot menu. I googled a bit and found EasyBCD which I am going to try.

Edit / Update: EasyBCD worked like a dream. I ran it, clicked through some intro slides (not as many as MS Office) and it displayed some information about my boot situation (one on C, one on D). I then rebooted and have the blocky blue menu to choose from (pic above). I did change the default time out from 30 to 5 seconds.

Scott · Jan 19, 2023

RuffHi said:
Yes ... dual boot menu. I googled a bit and found EasyBCD which I am going to try.

Edit / Update: EasyBCD worked like a dream. I ran it, clicked through some intro slides (not as many as MS Office) and it displayed some information about my boot situation (one on C, one on D). I then rebooted and have the blocky blue menu to choose from (pic above). I did change the default time out from 30 to 5 seconds.

Nice!

pparks1 · Jan 20, 2023

RuffHi said:
Thanks for the info.

I have a OneDrive account but the data structure has got away from me a bit ... ok, a lot. I am planning on using a Fresh Build of Win 11 to reset my data structure ... and then fold in my OneDrive account. The longer term plan is to dual boot Win 10 and 11 and have them both using the same OneDrive setup.

If I create a Win11 SM account (and associated OneDrive install, can I merge the Win 11 account with my existing account?

With respect to OneDrive, I suggest keeping the OneDrive data on a separate drive or partition from an OS drive that you "might" image and restore with something like Macrium.

Take this example.

You build your machine on monday, and you configure onedrive in c:\onedrive
On tuesday, you are happy with how your machine is setup, so you take an image of the drive
On Wednesday, you create some documentation about your setup and you save as C:\onedrive\Windows11Setup.txt. It's now saved on your local drive, and it's also synched up to the cloud.
On thursday, you are playing with the registry, you make a change and your machine no longer boots. You try to fix it and eventually give up and go to bed, you will just restore your image from Tuesday in the morning....you feel you don't have much to lose.
On Friday, you restore your image of your C:\ drive. So, your C:\onedrive folder is now empty because it was empty on Tuesday when you took the image. But you aren't concerned because your newly created files are in the Onedrive cloud, right?

So, what do you think happens

Your files are safely stored in the cloud and will appear in C:\onedrive once your computer sync's with the cloud as that's the newest copy of the file.
When OneDrive in the cloud sees your C:\onedrive folder is empty on your local machine, it's only assumption is that you intentionally deleted the files from C:\onedrive, and thus it removes it from the cloud and puts it into the recycle bin in OneDrive.

RuffHi · Jan 20, 2023

pparks - I have been seeing that very action happen while 'playing' with my OneDrive location. That said, OneDrive does provide a Recycle bin that holds 'deleted' files for a period of time. I have dive into that a little to recover some files. I can't say that it is particularly user friendly, but it seemed to work.

For the record, I have a 1TB NVMe drive dedicated to my OneDrive (O:\OneDrive). I will be using that location for OneDrive and for various 'special' folders (Desktop, Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, etc). I also store my Acronis TIB backup files there (not too many) and they all get shunted to the cloud.

That said, I am running Win10 and Win11 on the same hardware (both installed to different NVMe drives) and I want both OSs to share various folders (Docs, Music, Pictures, etc). I don't want them to share the Desktop folder ... so I have Win10Desktop and Win11Desktop. I also have two versions of my Acronis backup folders (I will let you guess the names of those!).

So ... part of yesterday was spent

taking a copy of all of those special folders (to a different drive)
turning OneDrive sync off
setting up my OneDrive NVMe drive as above
disabling explorer
changing RegEdit entries for those special folders
turning explorer back on (thanks to Brink for those batch files )
rebooting
reviewing the damage / my work

pparks1 · Jan 20, 2023

RuffHi said:
pparks - I have been seeing that very action happen while 'playing' with my OneDrive location. That said, OneDrive does provide a Recycle bin that holds 'deleted' files for a period of time. I have dive into that a little to recover some files. I can't say that it is particularly user friendly, but it seemed to work.

Yes, it does go to the online Recycle bin and you can pull it out.

In my example above, it was obvious and super easy as there was only 1 file and you would notice it missing. When it actually happened to me, I didn't notice the missing documentation for awhile. Fortunately, it was within the 90 day window that files are kept and I was able to restore my missing items easily, but it was confusing for awhile trying to figure out what happened to the stuff that I absolutely remember saving to my Documentation folder in OneDrive.

RuffHi · Jan 20, 2023

Someone called OneDrive a backup the other day. I don't think that is right. I treat it more as a sync method so that the same file is available to multiple PCs / people. I think you can use it as a backup, but you have to be careful with it (as you have noted).

pparks1 · Jan 20, 2023

Yeah, backup isn't quite the right word. Generally speaking, for somebody who just uses a computer (not an enthusiast who images and restores images regularly), OneDrive does provide the most basic functionality of a backup, having a copy of the file outside of your local computer so in the event that your computer is lost, stolen, broken, etc you don't lose your data.

And it's worth mentioning for those who haven't noticed this behavior, it's not "all" of the files in onedrive that end up in the Recycle Bin, it's only the files that you created/modified from the computer that you imaged between the time of the image and the restoration of the image that end up in the online recycle bin. Had you just reinstalled Windows to your PC instead of an image and setup OneDrive again, nothing would have changed at all. It would have been just as it was.

The only reason it bit me was that I have a couple of small Intel Nuc's, and a Beelink mini PC and I use them for playing and experimenting. So, I frequently change between Windows and Linux on those. Typically, I just run Macrium and grab an image before I install the other OS, so if I want to get back to where I was, I can pretty easily. Therefore, I simply moved these files to another drive or partition other than my C drive and only restore C when playing and experimenting and everything stays exactly as I would expect. And I wouldn't expect the average joe to be doing any of this.

jesseinsf · Jan 30, 2023

RuffHi said:
Install complete (after a bunch of spinning circles and dots ... and reboots). Now for a bunch of MS hoops ...

Confirm country and

keyboard: ok

Check for Updates: didn't seem to find any because it moved on quickly

Name Device; ok

Set Up Option: Personal

MS Account: Do I have to? I want to keep rolling and add this detail later.

Time to google to see if I really, really have to.

Edit: That didn't take long ... How to Install Windows 11 Without a Microsoft Account

Answer: Turn off the internet connection.

Just use Rufus, when creating the ISO with Rufus, check the local account option and add the name to your local account (check any of the other options that are relevant to you). There, no need to disconnect from the internet. It will log you in automatically and when you log off or restart/turn on your PC you will be forced to create a password. That's it

RJARRRPCGP · Feb 1, 2023

Clean-install time.

RuffHi · Dec 7, 2023

Sorry about the thread resurrection but I wanted to give you an update.

I finally moved to the Z690 motherboard. Initially, it was air cooled and I had to throttled back on some of my apps. It is now under water with way too much cooling capacity (2 x 360 radiators), running cool and silent.

I have a dual boot with Win10, Win11 and Win11 (testing). The Win 11 (testing) is a clone of my working Win11 install and I am using it as a form of back up.

The default was Win10 but I lost access to the motherboard through Aquacomputer (it worked in Win11) ... that that was the spur for me to make the move. Default is now Win11 but I have to drop back to Win10 to grab some settings sometimes (eg puTTY).

I have Acronis running nightly (backups) as well as slowly working through the install process of the older apps. It is really surprising the number of apps that get installed over time.

This time, I am trying(HA!) to keep a running log of the apps I am installing and my preferred settings. I have already found a bug in the Acronis settings import feature (talking to Acronis about that). I just realized that my MCEBuddy install will involve a complete flush of my settings (ie starting from scratch) so I will try and keep a log of the MCEBuddy settings I land on (and why!).

ProgEngi · Dec 7, 2023

Scott said:
I think he wants a boot menu, something like this

View attachment 50328

Please teach me how to take these picture(s) before/during boot

Ghot · Dec 7, 2023

My.... too centz.

Bree · Dec 7, 2023

ProgEngi said:
Please teach me how to take these picture(s) before/during boot

For pictures like that in his tutorials Brink takes a screenshot of a Hyper-V virtual machine running in a window, as do I. For example, here's one of mine from a VirtualBox VM.

Ghot · Dec 7, 2023

You can also use a smart phone, they'll be nice, but they won't be... perfect.

And if I take a smart phone picture of a smart phone picture... I see that my monitor is really made out of... cheap denim.

ProgEngi · Dec 7, 2023

Bree said:
For pictures like that in his tutorials Brink takes a screenshot of a Hyper-V virtual machine running in a window, as do I. For example, here's one of mine from a VirtualBox VM.

This is exactly what I thought, the only option is VM

ProgEngi · Dec 7, 2023

Ghot said:
You can also use a smart phone, they'll be nice, but they won't be... perfect.

View attachment 80342

And if I take a smart phone picture of a smart phone picture... I see that my monitor is really made out of... cheap denim.

View attachment 80343

Yes, I do understand, Smart Phone isn't a viable option for perfect picture

Fresh Win11 Install ... A blow by blow encounter?

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