It's time. My system is starting to run slow. It's a gaming PC, which means at least once a year I have to wipe and reload it. I am also running out of space on the games drive. Games are getting huge. I started with a 500G M2 drive for the OS, with a 1TB SATA for games. I figured that would last me for a while, and it did, but lately I have to remove a game to install another. The game drive is also where things like MAME live, which can take up a lot of space all its own. Since I have to replace a drive, I thought it might be time to take the plunge and upgrade from Windows 10 to 11. Windows 11 has been out long enough that the major bugs have been worked out, my Windows 10 system has been crying about updating for weeks, and I don't hear anyone screaming not to upgrade anymore. My gaming rig is made up of the latest hardware in most cases. (The processor is a Ryzen 9 5900X, but the video card is a RTX 2090. Still room for improvement, but at least it isn't a Pentium 4.)
I did a quick lookup for the best way to do this. Microsoft has a Recovery file that scans your system and creates a bootable USB drive to install Windows 11 to a clean PC. I downloaded it, ran it, and gave it a 16G USB drive. It chewed on the drive for a bit, then said "we don't know what went wrong." Great. Next I downloaded the full multi-version ISO. There is supposed to be a way to restore that image to a USB drive, but I'll be damned if I can find it. It isn't built into Disk Manager anymore. Did a quick web search, but as with anything Windows driver related, all I got were 10-12 sites insisting you have to download their spyware to install something. Decided to give the recovery disk another try, which worked this time. Not sure if I should trust it. Now that I am writing this, I remember I could have used Balena (Banana) Etcher to make a bootable USB drive. That always works. Dunno why I didn't think of it. Maybe because it's Saturday and I am hungry. There was a section asking which version of Windows 11 I wanted. I had to look it up. Do I need Home? Pro? Maybe the Education version? Oh, then there is Home Single Language? Oh! Windows 11 Home N? I don't remember much about that one, other than looking it up a few years ago and finding out the N stands for "Nope." So I went with Home Single Language. It's for games. I don't plan to do work on it. I have a MacBook with a Windows VM on it, a Chromebook (which actually gets a LOT of use when working from home,) and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 9 Ultra. I don't need yet another PC for working from home.
I'm looking through my drives for anything that needs to be backed up. Most of what I play is backed up to the cloud - I mostly play Steam games, which back themselves up. I don't really play World of Warcraft anymore, but I do play Diablo 3 a lot. I play Xbox games, which are also backed up to their cloud (and share progress with my Xbox Series X.) I am backing up my MAME stuff, as those took a while to put together. This is neat though, there is no Eject option on my backup drive. I wonder why...
* Later found out you have to use the Device button to eject it. Samsung and/or Microsoft trying to protect me from myself I guess.
Now the fun part. Taking it all apart. First task was clearing space on a desk to work on it, followed by getting the computer off the floor from under the gaming desk. The good news is, it's a fairly new case. Everything is easy to get to, and I did a decent job with cables. I have only had this case open once, so I couldn't remember where the little plastic door was that covers the M.2 drive. Stood there straining my back for 5 minutes, the wife walked in, took one look, pointed and asked innocently, "Is it under this little door?" Well, it was... Regardless of how much or little your spouse knows about building a PC, have them around anyway. They might surprise you. Had to remove the video card to get to the drive, but from there it was easy. Pull out the 500G boot drive and replace it with the 2TB drive. Reassembled it, stuck it back under the desk, plugged in the cables (SO MANY CABLES!) and fired it up. BIOS popped up automatically because there was no longer a boot disk. Took a few tries to find the section that told it what to boot from, but eventually I got it set up. Booted from the Windows 11 installer, but it would not install. It showed Disk 0 (the old 1TB SATA game drive, now the boot drive) with three partitions, none of which show as usable. Then it showed the 2TB drive (the new game drive) as just empty. I had to manually remove all three partitions from the 1TB drive, make it all one large disk, format it, now Windows says it can be used. I left the 2TB alone for now.
Started the Windows 11 installer. Fairly straightforward, it asked me some questions about language and such, then started installing. Went downstairs to eat brunch (2pm, we slept in today.) After an egg sandwich, I was going to go back upstairs to see how far the install got. Got as far as the living room and heard beeping. I asked my wife if it was her phone. We have a bunch of devices in the house that beep, but I recognize most of them. Every now and then Paula's phone will make a peep sound I hadn't heard before, but this time the sound came from upstairs. Okay, must be Windows 11. New Windows, new beeping. As if I wasn't sure, this was followed by a LOUD announcement from upstairs about enabling Accessibility. I guess I had the speakers connected correctly.
Windows then asked if I wanted to set up my phone. It gave me a barcode I could scan if I had an Android phone (I do, but I don't want to.) The kitchen isn't going to clean itself, so I walked away from the PC. Came back half an hour later and was met with a screen that said "it looks like this is taking a while we'll set up your phone later." Well, good for it. Windows now has the capability to recognize a time waster.
The next half hour was spent answering yet more questions and copying files.
Set up Edge. WHY?
It asked if I wnted to unlock a trial of Microoft 365. I told it I had a product key (I do.). I thought maybe it would ask for my license key, but instead it did nothing, just moved on.
Copying files. Offered to let me play a game while I waited.
Tools for Focus to reduce Distractions. It's called an OFF switch.
"If your update isn't done, it's okay to step away." Three days later....
"You're 5% there." It's been running for an hour.
Reboot, now I am 95% there. Ooookay.
Now it wants me to log in with the pin I set up 4 hours ago.
Hi.
Oh good, a few more minutes.
Please keep your PC on and plugged in. Don't turn off your PC.
So sayeth the Department of Reundancy Department.
Still working on a few things... Almost there. But still, don't turn off your PC. I guess in case you forgot.
Okay, I finally have a desktop! It wants me to download the Asus Armoury Crate app. I don't remember what that does. It's also telling me it can't find the nVidia Control Panel. Well, sure, clean install and all that... Fortunately there's Microsoft's version of the app store for all your app needs.
When I logged in with my Microsoft account a few hours ago, it said it made a backup of my applications. Not sure what or when it did that but most of my apps are here. Odd that it installed Firefox but not Chrome. As I started clicking on the icons I learned that the app was not there, it was just a link to download the latest version of the app. Again, there was a link for Firefox (which I never use) but no link for Chrome (which I use exclusively.)
I clicked Eject on the Windows 11 installer drive. The entire screen flashed. Is that normal?
Armoury Crate wants me to create an account. I filled out the info, click on Sign Up Now, and nothing happens. It's just stuck. Maybe this is why I don't already have an account.
The icon for Steam is here, but when I click it, I get a box saying I need to download it from the publisher's web site because it isn't in the Microsoft Store. It then opens in Edge without asking. No way to close it, can't bypass it, I MUST USE EDGE. I get four more confirmtions from Edge before I am allowed to download Steam. Guess what, Edge - Chrome is the next thing I install. The Download Steam button is now changed to Install Steam. I click that and it downloads Steam again. I guess in case I need 2 copies. As usual with Steam, you install it, run it, log into it, then it downloads and installs an update. I have Steam on my phone, so logging in was easy enough. Now another 24 hours to reinstall all my games. While waiting, I installed Vortex so I can grab mods for Skyrim. Better trees, flowers, DUCKS, armor, etc. Also download the Blizzard Battle.net installer. As I type this, stuff is happily installing. The hardware did not change save for a larger storage drive, so I don't expect anything to happen faster than before. I am not disappointed. Prices on video cards were dropping now that the crypto market has gone foom, so maybe that's my next purchase. $1200 video card is now $300, that's more like it.
(I still have trouble typing, so this blog entry is enter text, go back and correct it, enter more text, go back and correct that, etc.)
Oh, neat trick Microsoft. You can't personalize anything until Windows is licensed, and setting the audio device and speaker configuration is considered personalization. Oh well, it installed, it's gotta work by this point, so fine whip out the plasti - oh, never mind, Google already knows all my credit cards.
It's now 6:30 and I have a working game system. I'll spend the next few days reinstalling stuff and tweaking settings, but hey it works. Until the next patch at least.