Updated: September, 7, 2019
Upgrading my desktop to a 1TB 970 EVO SSD because 500GB is no longer enough. And I'm not even a gamer. Geez. But the price was excellent and I only had 9GB left.
Updated: March 11, 2020
Performance was horrific. Driver? Bad install of something? I don't know. I went from bad machine to completely new install - with all updates and software installed, using a USB (not reset/fresh options) in about three hours. And the perf is amazing. Always a reminder on why I do these semi-annually. Of course, there's still plenty of time to be spent on tweaking software, settings, etc. I am going to try and note them here, for posterity.
Something I did differently this time is install a local account for all my installation work. Why? Because I see AppData grow and never shrink. I've tried to go in and clean it up but it's nigh impossible. So, I installed everything under this local account and then I dumped it. So, I installed everything under this local account and then I dumped it. And I'll probably do a three way redo, create local, dump MSA, re-create-MSA, dump local to purge that AppData folder. it's just a wasteland. And sure, some caching will be lost and will have to be re-downloaded, but that's OK. I don't want to say that shoddy devs are leaving behind all sorts of crap during installs, daily usage and after uninstall, but that's what I'm saying. You know it's true. Here is the current values, let's check again in a few months and see what we find.
March 2020 -
Installer Account - 1.2GB
My fresh MSA account - No Installation Work - 940MB
This post is as much for you as it is for me. I typically reset my machine and reinstall everything at least once a year - usually twice. Lately, it seems like I'm on the same cadence as Windows. Every major release they do, I do, too :)
To be fair, though, I start getting crazy and wild and install every software I come across as I started getting antsy for a new install. I've installed more software in the last 60 days, then I did in 6 months before that. It's an easy way to trial everything without worrying all the cruft it's going to leave behind when I ununstall. If you ever look into the hidden local folders, you'll see what I mean. And I tried cleaning that up one time and BSOD myself and it took a few hours to fix that.
This list will track what I constantly use and some other stuff.
Must Haves
| Visual Studio | software |
| Extensions |
|
| VS Code | software |
| Postman | software |
| SSMS | software |
| Office (Outlook, Excel and Word) | software |
| Edge, Chrome, Firefox | software |
| Azure Explorer | software (electron) |
| Spotify | app |
| LastPass | app and extension |
Affinity Designer I bought this as a replacement to Photoshop. It's been tough getting used to. Aside from it being a vector based app (more like Illustrator) I used PS for so long that it's taking a bit to get used to it. I just couldn't justify the cost of PS for as little as I use it. | software |
Toggle Desktop To try and track my time on projects | software |
Beyond Compare I don't used it a smuchas before now that FTP is not a thing X) but I still occasionally use it to compare folders | Software |
| Oculus Rift | |
| Steam - for City Skylines | |
| Sumatra PDF | |
| Spotify |
Must Dos
I'm adding to this, what else needs setting up after the PC is re-installed and softwarre is added. Because it's a pain. Here we go.
- Uninstall MS Crapware - this is a sad state of affairs. How much can MS make from having Candyland preinstalled?
- Make sure all updates are in place. This time I downloaded the latest 1909 image, which had almost every update. That was cool.
- Change power settings. So that my computer stops going to sleep every time I look away.
- VS is a huge install - 26GBs. Jeez. Just pointing it out.
- Taskbar and start menu. Getting it right. Why doesn't the profile service remember this?
Post Install - The Small Stuff
Visual Studio is probably what requires the most time because it's where I spend the most time. Most of that time is spent on re-installing the extensiosn from the roaming profile option.
Trailing Whitespace Visualizer
VS Spell Checker