Boxstarter scripts

This repository contains boxstarter scripts to help setup a dev environment on a new windows box.

There is a two step process, some large installs like VS, SQL server etc.. are done manually.

You can run the scripts multiple times. If a program is already installed it will just be skipped.

The Windows configs for Boxstarter can be found here

Introduction

Every time I do a clean Windows install I update the scripts and notes on this page, in order to make the next clean install easier and faster. The goal is to setup a productive .NET dev environment as quickly as possible by only installing the bare minimum.

These notes and scripts were first started around 2014, and have gone through numerous revisions. (I typically re-install Windows every 6 months.)

Settings and licenses are stored in "C:\Source\Licenses and Settings"

Pre-Install

Read docs\Checklist_NewInstall.md

Install

The Boxstarter list only contains software I use regularly.
The Boxstarter links to use in IE (or Edge) are found at the top of each file.
The order in which the files should be run are:
1. Manual: Update BIOS (for new Windows installs)
2. Boxstarter: UpdateWindows.txt (Run this just after installing windows.)
  - Double check the file and uncomment line for Dell installs
3. Manual: Install drivers (for new Windows installs)
4. Manual: Run PowerShell Scripts to set correct settings for Win10 (See section below)
5. Boxstarter: InstallSoftware.txt (Run 2 or 3 times until no more errors occur)
6. Manual Installs:
  - Directory Opus
  - Rider (Seriously good C# dev IDE. Install from Toolbox)
    - DotTrace (Install from Toolbox as well)
  - VisualStudio - Preview
    - NOTE: See VisualStudio_Rider_Setup.md file, to setup Rider and VS
  - MS Office (Through office365)
  - OneDrive
  - bvckup2
  - WordWeb (Pro version)
  - Greenshot (Latest release from Github)
  - AsciiDoctor
  - splashtop (Server and client)
7. Boxstarter: PostInstall.txt
8. Manual: Run "Disk Cleaner" from the command line

NOTE: Whenever you need a program check Chocolatey first. It is the best place to discover the most used programs by developers for any category.

Read the "docs\SoftwareToKeepAnEyeOn.md" document.

Product keys are available from: https://my.visualstudio.com/productkeys

Licenses and settings are available here: https://github.com/Orcomp/Licenses-and-settings (which is private ;-). Check the FolderStructure.md file to re-establish the right folder structure for various programs.

Paid Software

I generally try and use free or open source software as much as possible. So when I pay for something it has to be worth it.

Post Install - Configurations

Files and Folder:
- Folder Organisation
Set another text editor as default (instead of notepad): https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/replace-notepad-text-editor-notepad-plus-association
- Run Notepad Replacer (already installed by Chocolatey)
Run Sysinternals Autoruns to manage programs that are allowed to startup on their own.
Make sure Drives have the right name. (Run "Disk Management" from the command line. See this link for help)
Install Dropbox and point it to "I:\Dropbox"
Install OneDrive and point it to "I:\Files..."

Windows

Enable "Night Light" settings
Make sure "Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling" is turned on in "Display settings > Graphics Settings (bottom of the page) > Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling = true"
Make sure HDD is not indexed and is not allowed to sleep (otherwise it causes windows to freeze every so often). Control Panel > Power Options, choose your preferred plan > Change Advanced power settings > Hard Disk > Turn off hard disk after .... and set it to "never".

Setup Scripts

This looks like the best, active, up to date script to be use: https://github.com/farag2/Sophia-Script-for-Windows (Also assess: https://github.com/hellzerg/optimizer) (Watch the YouTube videos to refresh memory.)

Other scripts:

https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/win10script
- https://christitus.com/debloat-windows-10-2020/ (Chris continually keeps this up to date.)
https://github.com/Sycnex/Windows10Debloater
https://github.com/gordonbay/Windows-On-Reins
https://github.com/Disassembler0/Win10-Initial-Setup-Script No longer active. Cloned the repo and have my own My.preset options.

Notes:

Other simple GUI tools to consider (Beware see comment section):

Task Scheduler

Setup script to create new workspace on login. (See I:\Scripts)

Settings

Settings > Search > Searching Windows > disable
Might need to disable this on all HDDs directly as well. (Right click on the HDD drive, Properties, disable indexing)
Notifications and actions > disable all notifications

Teams

Settings > Disable hardware acceleration. (Causes images to jitter)

Setup Date Time, Region, Language properly

https://support.gitkraken.com/known-issues/date-format/

Icons

Right click on desktop and change the icons to small (Should be set by PowerShell script).

Power Plan

Make sure power plan is on ultimate or performance
Never sleep or hibernate

Disable auto restart on scheduled updates

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/disable-forced-restarts-windows-update/
Disable reboot after updates: https://www.minitool.com/news/prevent-windows-update-from-automatically-restarting-your-pc.html

Disable Encryption

Device Encryption : Turn Off (Turn off bitlocker on Windows 10 Pro or above)

Extensions

Chrome (Should be synced to Google account):

Toby
Session Buddy
Octotree
Todoist
Todoist for Gmail
EasyReader
Polar (PDF reader) (https://getpolarized.io/)
Paperpile
DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
Github Writer (https://github.com/ckeditor/github-writer)

Vivaldi

Same as Chrome
Vivaldi email

Keep an eye on:

Tabli
Tidy Bookmark Tree

Antivirus

The default anti virus that comes with Windows is good enough.

Configure Defender from PowerShell. See the docs.

Some more useful docs and here

Run as admin (Copy and paste into PowerShell)

Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath 'C:\Source', 'C:\Users\Ben\.nuget', 'C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Roaming\WildGums', 'I:\', 'K:\'

Add-MpPreference -ExclusionProcess 'C:\Program Files\Bvckup 2\*', 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\*', 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Splashtop\*', 'C:\Program Files\FreeFileSync\Bin\*', 'C:\Program Files\GPSoftware\Directory Opus\*', 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Duplicate Cleaner Pro\*', 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\*', 'C:\Users\Ben\AppData\Local\Fork\*'

Partitions

Since the OS will be going on a SSD drive no need to partition.

Notes

Markdown: Use VSCode with some markdown extensions
VSCode extensions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35773299/how-can-you-export-vs-code-extension-list
Visual Studio extensions: Sync to account
Chrome Extensions: type in "chrome://system" then click on the expand extensions button (Google should remember the extensions as they are saved to my Google account.)
- Session Buddy
- Toby
- Todoist
- Octotree
- EasyReader
- Paperpile
DirectoryOpus settings (Opus has a great wizard to save and restore settings)

C# Scripting

Looks like dotnet-script is the best current solution with full support in VS Code. The file extension is ".csx".

Guides

bvckup v2

Probably the fastest way of copying files from one directory to another

Straight one time copy of files from one folder to another: https://bvckup2.com/support/forum/topic/917

Manually run job
Copy files in full
Disable move/rename detection

Make sure anti-virus software is disabled

Boxstarter

Install / Use

README