new laptop, would you do a clean windows install?

[ultimate99]

For a 2in1 such as the z13 Flow 2025, would you do do a clean install of windows 11 and download/install drivers individually off of Asus's website?

There's a also Asus's Cloud Recovery, where it reformats the device and reinstalls all drivers, office and armory crate, would you use that instead?

I've managed to create a microwin (minimal windows 11 iso - Chris Titus) on all of my desktops, no problems.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

[Moved to (Microsoft) Windows Forum]

Me, personally, yes I would do a clean install. To clean out all the ASUS bloatware you'd never use. And just hogging up your system.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

See if you can disable auto install (prompt) of Armory Crate in the bios/uefi.

[tsupersonic]

Absolutely - I would go Linux, but if not viable, either dual-boot Linux/Windows. For Windows, I would only use W10 IOT LTSC, or W11 IOT LTSC if I really had to. 

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Yes, 100% a clean install.  Using a Microsoft image.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I usually purchase laptops with the lowest amount of RAM and smallest capacity SSD that they are available with, and separately purchase the RAM and SSD since this tends to be cheaper than for what the manufacturers charge for these upgrades.

In parallel with this, I will download and create the factory recovery media from the manufacturer so that when the laptop arrives I can perform a clean install of Windows with any device-specific drivers and software already installed.  I will note that I tend to purchases business systems, so there is no unwanted software (games, trial versions of antivirus software, etc.) installed, just the OS and whatever additional software is needed to make use of the hardware's features. 

If I was purchasing a consumer laptop I would perform the same action, just uninstalling any unwanted software that was part of the preload.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[Som]

always

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

On 06/09/2025 at 09:53, Som said:

always

Well said!