Best Bang for your Buck

[Ed P]

I switched to Win11 some while ago. I really do not know how to advise you. If you have the gear, know how to set up tpm etc and have the spare time then I would say go for it, as it costs you nothing to do at the moment but may later on.

I think Dave is being a little unfair in his comment.

Win11 is really built for a Corporate environment in terms of security. As such I would say that Win11 is perhaps 10% more secure than Win10. On the two PCs that have migrated I have seen no downsides, but the migration exercise is non-trivial in setting up a secure TPM environment. Buying a box with it installed is a lot easier!

Win11 is prettier, and slightly different in its operation, but it does not require much to make the transition.

Good points:

A much improved file manager, and slightly more logical Settings/Control Panel demarcation. Basically Settings is the simpleton level and Control Panel is the down and dirty level, but of course much higher level than PowerShell. Win11 PowerToys are better than the Wiun10 version, and offer useful things such as file unlocking  a Hosts file editor and instant shortcuts for every installed program.

Bad Points:

Harder than Win10 to set-up screen shortcuts for non-Apps

Although the TaskBar offers very useful App screen shortcuts I have yet to find ways of putting Shortcuts for everything I use regularly onto the TaskBar.

Nearly gave me heart failure when a Toast message first appeared – this is a security problem warning system plus other messages that runs separately from your AV etc.

Generally I have no regrets in installing Win11, but no real ‘killer’ points to date.

[JayCeeDee]

I think that the TPM shenanigans is what will put me off upgrading, I hate being under a restrictive environment that is unfamiliar to me, that is where simple problems turn into dramas which turn into crises. There doesn’t seem to be enough of an upside.

Cheers Ed👍.

[Ed P]

Once set up TPM+Secure Boot is invisible, but you must remember to make a Recovery Drive if you don’t then TPM/Secure Boot will gang up against you when things go pear-shaped. Btw NOTE the size of recovery drive that is required – even a 16Gb drive is TOO SMALL!

However other than the bloated size of the recovery drive there really isn’t anything more than you already have done for Windows 8 onwards. (Win7 had a much nicer backup system).

[Ed P]

John,  this September 2022 article igives a good comparison between Win10 and Win11. As I said no killer aspects except perhaps security. The article does however suggest that Win11 is a better Gamer box than Win10.

[Dave Rice]

Bit Locker is certainly nothing to be concerned about at all, as Ed says it’s invisible in use. I haven’t needed a special recovery drive yet, just the encryption key on the rare occasion something has gone awry (both linked to UEFI updates on older machines which reset the TPM).

Since Gen 6 (?) most Intel and equivalent AMD CPUs have the TPM inbuilt so there’s nothing to buy. For my business customers I encrypt by default on machines and server shares and encourage them to use Bit Locker on their USB drives.

You cannot complete the drive encryption until you have printed out or saved the key to another drive. For some reason beyond me you cannot save the key to an encrypted drive, which my network drives are. So I save them to a USB stick then copy them to the server. I keep the keys for all my customers (no they cannot be trusted to) so I add the machine name to the key’s filename to make them easier to find (don’t overwrite the filename as it’s what MS will use to prompt you).

May be I was a little harsh on 11 but I really cannot find any compelling reason to upgrade and I am an early adopter of everything. I still install Windows 10 on new machines as it may only have a few years left, but the free upgrade isn’t going away.

For backup I have used EaseUS ToDo for a long time now and install the Free version on new machines. I also use it to clone drives via system backup / restore as I’ve found it 100% reliable which I can’t say of direct cloning software. I have used the Free Acronis for WD on machines with WD drives, but ToDo is a lot easier to use.

[dwynnehugh]

Well it arrived, I eventually went for the AMD Ryzen 5 5600U Proc, 16GB RAM, 500GB NMVe, W11 Pro +  3 yrs warranty + external DVDRW.

It arrived only then did I see exactly HOW SMALL it was – the footprint of the DVD is larger than the PC!!  My main concern now is the comment made by Ed P which is all Greek to me:

Once set up TPM+Secure Boot is invisible, but you must remember to make a Recovery Drive if you don’t then TPM/Secure Boot will gang up against you when things go pear-shaped.

With my luck things will go pear shaped sooner or later, probably sooner than later.  How do I deal with this? Does this pop up when I initially power on or what – like the old PC asking for you to make a b/up copy when first booted.

Thanks in advance yet again,  Dave

 

 

 

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[JayCeeDee]

dwynnehugh wrote:

Once set up TPM+Secure Boot is invisible, but you must remember to make a Recovery Drive if you don’t then TPM/Secure Boot will gang up against you when things go pear-shaped.

Dave, that was from Ed to reassure me after the talk about W11, when I said I that I had considered TPM ( a core requirement for w11 ) to be ~ ‘sorcery’ and didn’t want to encrypt my PC without understanding totally the encryption part of it in case of any problems down the line. Basically, he was saying ( and Dave added further in a later post ) that it is  all automatic, behind the scene, so long as you kept the encryption key ( Recovery Drive ) separate ( and it forces you to do so on setup ).

Dave may go into more detail regarding setup.

[Dave Rice]

A recovery drive is something different and you’re not forced to make one. What’s saved as part of the process is a text file with the 64 character key in it.

[Ed P]

Dave is of course correct, but I’d still make a recovery drive as it makes life easier. As you have bought a commercially made box, you will probably find that it already has a rescue partition on it which coupled with a boot drive makes you ‘nearly’ fireproof.

[Dave Rice]

I’d also add a bootable USB stick with your backup software on it. All the big boys have an option to make one, usually called a Recovery Drive too!

I used to have bootable drives for Antivirus too, but those days are long gone when I had virus riddled PCs to clean up.

[Ed P]

+1 for Dave’s comment. Just by way of explanation, TPM+secure boot means that you need a an authorised way in if things go pear-shaped. A boot disk at the very least gets you started. If you don’t have this then you have to perform what could be called a factory reset i.e. wipe your drive and start all over again – any and all personal files and installed programs will be lost.

That said, and touching wood like crazy, I have never had to use a boot drive so ‘going pear-shaped’ is probably a fairly rare happening

[Dave Rice]

These two are the usual causes, becoming less and less common, but either the boot partition gets screwed or one of the system files does. Both easily sorted from the command line of a bootable USB. In the case of an encrypted drive you’ll have to put the key in before access is allowed. No key? All you can do is format it.

I do still have to deal with forgotten Windows passwords, but again very rarely. In the case of a hardware issue I would tend to remove the drive and put it in a caddy on my PC with all the tools on, but USB sticks with all the tools do still exist.

[Ed P]

Make a folder on your Boot Drive and put a text file in it with your password. Unless you are doing something really naughty no one is going to access your Boot Drive!

[Dave Rice]

Well I finally decided to upgrade the laptop to Windows 11 (it’s what I use most) and apart from having to uninstall / reinstall the fingerprint sensor it was painless.

The 22H2 version was installed (the main PC hasn’t upgraded as yet) and the UI changes are very nice. I can drag and drop files onto toolbar apps again, hooray! The look is a lot less flat than W10 and I don’t lose track of the mouse as much, hooray again.

With 22H2 I think we have reached that tipping point where W10 has moved to the background and W11 is where it’s at. For me the jury is still out on whether this is a “must do” upgrade but it’s certainly a might as well and there’s plenty of time left.

[keith with the teef]

Yep, my w10 could do with a rewrite. Its getting a bit laggey and on that note I decided to make the change to w111 when the new drivers come out for AMDs next gen graphics.

But I think I should go w11 now and learn a little about it, so when the next gen hardware drivers come out I can do a clean fresh install of w11.

Which is where you wanna be.

[Ed P]

It is certainly easier to do a fresh install, but I think you can probably set up the TPM and Secure Boot requirements while still on Win10.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-activate-tpm-2-0-and-secure-boot-in-windows-10/

Doing this first enables you to check if your hardware is completely AOK, and then  gets you to the point where Win11 can either be freshly installed or go the upgrade path.

While your hardware is almost certainly OK, M$’s requirements do not always seem completely logical in terms of CPU Stepping number, so it is worth a check.

[keith with the teef]

Good one.

I will do it now. 🙂  Going w11 tonight.

Apparently w10 is no in maintenance mode until its phased out.

[keith with the teef]

Well that had to be the quickest O/S upgrade ever. It was maybe 2mins after restart..

I like it, easy nav and intuitive.

The first 2 games I tried: Red dead and BF5. Nuts, got a massive fidelity update to both games. The HDR just works. I only have a 400nit monitor, but wow what windows HDR can do with it. Standing under the street lights in BF5 felt like real.

Pleased 🙂

[dwynnehugh]

Thanks to one and all who have helped me on this – HOWEVER when the PC arrived I was astounded to see how small it was – not that that matters.  I needed to insert the SSD in it so as per instructions I unscrewed the 4 base corner screws and waited or either the top or the bottom to part but NO.  Solid as a rock.  Asked Bee-link for advice they couldn’t help and asked for photos of the rear part of the case so they could find out!!  Hope to have it ready for delivery before the 3yr warranty runs out!!

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Ed P]

Sorry, I’m too accostomed to taking electronic bits apart that I forget how daunting it can be at first!

I have a wide selection of Spodgers, but the ones are find most handy for opening cases are ‘Plastic Razor Blades‘. While I guess you could use a thin knife blade a plastic spodger does not scratch the case.

You basically find a suitable place on the  ‘seam’, ram in a spodger then continue around the case ramming in more spodgers and eventually it will open. Normally these things just press fit back together when you have finished.

[Author]

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