Bringing technical clarity to the unknown

New computer day game plan

07 Jul 2026 🔖 windows devops
💬 EN

Table of Contents

My PC’s been in limp mode for two years, and I finally ordered a new-to-me replacement. Given the equipment I have on hand, and the impracticality of buying much more in 2026’s era of price gouging, here’s the plan. (How lucky that I’ve gotten to learn a lot about enterprise “endpoint” management over the last few years. Potentially a game changer. This will be my first round of trying to do “new laptop day” in a repeatable, low-pain fashion.)

Day -2: before machine arrives

  1. Learn the F-keys, so I can bootup as indicated below. Memorize, write down, tape to monitor, or whatever.
  2. Have two spare flash USB drives handy (I think I might be out, and I’m going to need two for this – buy?).
  3. Have enough desk space, power outlets, monitors, keyboards (buy?), mice (buy?), etc. handy for ergonomics. Set up the desk.
  4. Have two spare USB external drives handy (for sizes, see day -1: physical reboxability).
    • Format the matchy-matchy-sized spare USB external drive meant as a “day -1” clone target.
  5. Make a bootable Win11-ready backup-management flash USB and label it so I remember which one it is.
  6. Decide what I desire in my autounattend.xml and populate it (Schneegans can help).
    • Biggest outstanding question: exactly how much drive formatting of the new PC’s internal disk will I want Win11-unattended-install to perform?
      • (It could be nice to leave the recovery partition the way the new PC vendor had it set up for me.)
  7. Make a bootable Win11-clean-install (download latest from Microsoft to reduce later update lag) flash USB with my autounattend.xml on it in the appropriate way.
    • Validate that it works as desired by clean-installing a VM with it, using a spare Win11 key of my own, on one of my spare computers that’s already rocking an all-purpose hypervisor.
  8. Have “my usual daily backup” USB external drive handy (needed on day 0+).

Day -1: make physical machine reboxable

My new computer’s under warranty, so if I realize, at some point, that I’ve got a lemon, I might need to be able to restore it back into the exact shape in which I got it.

-1A: physical inspection

  1. Unbox.
  2. Pop the case but don’t touch anything.
  3. Open a support ticket if anything visually looks wrong.
  4. Put the lid back on.
  5. Plug in power, and a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

-1B: disk backup

  1. Plug in two USB external storage drives:
    1. A just-formatted drive of equal size to the drive shipped inside new PC.
    2. A big ol’ drive with at least as much space free as the drive shipped inside the new PC.
  2. Plug in my bootable USB flash drive that comes w/ my backup-management software on it.
  3. Power up the new PC and quickly press the appropriate F-key to make it boot into the backup-management flash USB.
  4. Clone the new PC’s internal disk onto the USB drive of equal size.
  5. Image the new PC’s internal disk as a file on the free space of the big USB drive.
  6. Power down the new PC and unplug both USB storage drives.

-1C: OS license backup

  1. Leave the backup-management flash USB in for now, in case it helps w/ the PowerShell below.
  2. Power up the new PC and quickly press the appropriate F-key to get into a PowerShell CLI that can help me extract the OEM Win11 key shipped by the new PC’s vendor. (Might be booting into my backup-management flash USB; might be booting into the internal hard drive’s recovery mode or something.)
  3. Write down the OEM Win11 key on paper, and also put it into a cloud-based secrets vault.
  4. Power down the new PC and pop out the backup-management flash USB.

-1D: validate OS license backup quality

  1. Validate that the OEM Win11 key works by trying it out in an autounattended clean-install Win11 VM, on one of my spare computers that’s already rocking an all-purpose hypervisor.

-1E: validate disk backup quality

  1. Validate that the big-USB-drive image works as expected by seeing what happens when I boot it up in a VM, on one of my spare computers that’s already rocking my backup-management vendor’s specialized hypervisor.
    • Maybe repeat a few times to make sure that even if I proceed into setup, if I start up a fresh VM w/ that image, it always loads into the first-boot sequence and always lets me set up Windows as a clean first-boot sequence.

-1F: organization

  1. Label the two backups with sticky notes, etc. as being what I’ll need before initiating any sort of new-PC return if I have to make a warranty claim.
  2. Put the two backups into appropriate long-term storage (airgapped, cloud, etc.).

-1G: sleep peacefully (reboxably)

Congratulations, me!

This physical machine can now feel comfortably “mine” (because I now have a “vendor’s” restoration plan).

Day 0: install clean OS

0A: prepare the internal disk if desired

  1. If I don’t have my clean-unattended-install’s autounattend.xml configured to do drastic formatting of the new PC’s internal disk, consider booting off my backup-management flash USB and using its PowerShell to wipe the new PC’s internal disk clean and format it.
    • (Unsure if I really want to do this. It could be nice to leave the recovery partition the way the new PC vendor had it set up for me.)

0B: clean install

  1. Plug in my bootable unattended-clean-install USB flash drive.
  2. Power up the new PC and quickly press the appropriate F-key to make it boot into the unattended-clean-install flash USB.
  3. Do the install, and any weird little things that had to be done manually (e.g. I think I remember that I prefer not to hardcode in passwords for secondary OS user accounts into autounattend.xml, so I need to do those manually).
  4. Power down the new PC and pop out the unattended-clean-install flash USB.

0C: online updates

  1. Power up the new PC…
    • Optional: …and quickly press the appropriate F-key to make it boot into the internal disk, if I’d rather leave it on that as primary
  2. Log into my clean install.
  3. Give it internet access and let it run Windows Update, etc.

0D: validate secure boot certificates

  1. Reboot and quickly press the appropriate F-key and see if that one June 2026 UEFI issue with Microsoft certificates needs attention. Fix if so.

0E: nap peacefully (cleanly)

Congratulations, me!

I am now bootable into my accounts on a cleanly-installed Win11 operating system.

0F: schedule recurring backup

  1. Install, and punch my license key into, my backup-management desktop software, on the new PC.
  2. Plug in the USB drive I plan to use for “my usual daily backup” and give it its usual drive letter mapping.
  3. Set up, and kick off a first run of, regularly scheduled backup imaging of the new PC’s internal disk.

0G: validate recurring backup

  1. Eject the “usual daily backup” drive.
  2. Validate whether the just-made image’s file contents are explorable from one of my spare computers that has my backup-management desktop software also installed.
  3. If not, troubleshoot until they are.

0H: resume recurring backup

  1. Plug the “usual daily backup” drive into the new PC (and possibly velcro it onto the case), so that it’ll be ready for the next scheduled run.
  2. Power down the new PC; day 0 is done.

0I: sleep peacefully (cleanly and managedly)

Congratulations, me!

I’ve now basically got this lump of metal set up like “new-laptop-day” feels in an enterprise. It’s cleanly imaged, and it’s auto-managed appropriately.

Day 1: customize and restore personality

Congratulations, me! I’ve just been issued a well-managed “new laptop” by my “enterprise endpoint management” department (heh – me).

Time to make it more than an OS – time to make it a system that I can truly call MINE. 💃

Remember, I’m working off a clean OS install, so I’ve got a little bit more to do than I might in, say, a “rollback” to an old backup of a well-worn image.

  1. I’ve got meaningful executables to install before bringing over files.
  2. When I bring over meaningful files from wherever they currently live, I’ll need both:
    • a lot of config-related files (e.g. for all those executables) & commands-to-be-run that might already be present/configured in, say, a “rollback” to an old backup of a well-worn image
    • “the usual” (my pictures & documents, etc.)

If I want to get really paranoid, I can manually back up the new PC’s internal disk after each major piece of work, but remember, I’ve also already got dailies going.

IMPORTANT: write things down into remote-backed-up version control. Preferably automating as I go w/ a “GitOps” / “paper plates, not fine china; cattle, not pets” mentality, as, say, idempotent PowerShell scripts. But at the very least as Markdown files / PowerShell comments / etc. (lol, the notes as the Git; my hands and eyes as the Ops.)

  • Why: This computer, too, will blue-screen-of-death on me one day, and a major life improvement I hope to start engaging in with this new-computer process is to make “clean install to full personality” far less toil & duration than it’s been historically.

Week 2: decommission the old computer

  1. At some point, make my final backup image of the old computer’s disks and label them well.
    • (Try booting the image up in a VM on a spare computer with a backup-management vendor’s hypervisor, if I want to validate that they really-really work.)
  2. To force my hand, boot the old computer off my backup-management flash USB and use its PowerShell to wipe its internal disks clean and format them. Yes, all the way – even recovery partitions. I want to completely sever all attachment to this computer’s former personality. I have a new computer now, and its personality is my new daily-driver PC-personality.
  3. Power down the old computer, pull out the backup-managent flash USB, and put the old computer into a closet until I figure out what exactly it’s “for.”
    • (Theoretically, I might be able to clean-image it and get the stupid thing to stop blue screen of deathing, and then have a spare computer for … unsure what, but … something.)
    • (Maybe if I get my “days -1 to 1” work automated enough, I can occasionally practice doing full “clean install and re-personality-population” failover drills on it, and have it handy in case the new PC, or some other PC in my care, starts BSOD-ing?)
  4. Clean up legacy backup images from the old PC, keeping just the final validated backup image. The rest are no longer needed; that computer’s personality no longer exists, so older editions of that personality no longer need restoration ever again. And in today’s disk prices, I need to free up unused gigabytes for keeping my active fleet backed up!
  5. Clean up the desk from being such a “job site” – get everything all tidied up the way I “normally” like having it.
    • (Including getting visually appealing new side tables, or mounting equipment if it seems like the desk can handle the weight, or whatever, since I switched form factor when I picked my new PC.)

aftermath miscellany

  1. Speaking of my Win11 keys, write down all those spare Win11 keys I own but haven’t taken the time to write down yet, before something happens to destroy the originals.
    • (Put it on the backlog with the crafts for my relatives and the website migrations for my friends.)
  2. Vaguely keep an eye out for parts deals (memory, internal drives, external drives, DVD drive, etc.) and possibly hoard a smidge.
    • One day, after it’s already out of warranty anyway, I’m going to want to upgrade the new PC, or add better backup to more PCs, or build a NAS or something, and parts ain’t what they used to be, in terms of price.
  3. Vaguely keep an eye out for deal-of-the-millennium PC deals, since while this was a decent new PC, it was a little bit of a desperation PC, and for the right price, it could be nice to start this all over again yet again but be happier with the setup for longer.
  4. Remember to stay on top of all my various backup & recovery drills that I decide are worth keeping myself engaged in. All PCs can suddenly blue screen of death, and this new PC is no exception.
    • Ditto for all the other PCs in my care.
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