I’ve been thinking that I should refresh my Surface Book, especially in light of the findings of Consumer Reports and Microsoft’s objections and my own freeze/dark screen problems, but I’ve been putting it off because it’s painful.
Reinstalling multiple applications, restoring my configurations, and retrieving my data all seem like big chores. Once I realized that, however, I reflected on one of the batch-size principles: if it hurts, do it more often.
So I started to look into automating the process and ran across an old, eye-opening series of blog posts about “Scripting the setup of a developer PC.”
While I knew about Chocolatey and plan to use it, the biggest eye-opener was Ninite, which bundles up a bunch of free software installs into one big download-and-install.
I still need to take inventory of everything, but the idea is to ensure that I know where my data and config files are, and then do the following:
- Clean re-install of Windows 10
- Scripted/bundled install of my applications
- Scripted configuration restore or configuration of as much as possible
All of my non-config data should be accessible via some sort of sync, except for my virtual machines, although that really points to the immediate need to start backing those up somewhere handy.
I feel you. I had to replace my phone three times this past year, and the re-installation was the worst part.