The Windows Utilities I Install on Every New PC Before Anything Else

Every new PC gets the same treatment from me, in the same order, before I connect a single account or open a browser. Not because I enjoy setting up computers, but because I’ve watched too many fresh installs get slower, noisier and more chatty with Microsoft within a month. Here’s what actually goes on first, why, and what each one costs.

Macrium Reflect goes on before anything else

A backup tool is the least fun install on this list and the one I refuse to skip. Macrium Reflect is the one I reach for. Before I install any other software, I image the clean Windows install.

That single image has saved me twice. Once after a bad GPU driver install, once after I broke something in the registry trying to force an update. Restoring took eleven minutes. Reinstalling Windows and every program from scratch would have taken most of an evening.

The free tier handles full disk imaging on one PC. If you have more than one machine or want incremental backups, you pay for a licence. For most people reading this, free is enough. Just set the schedule and forget it exists. The mistake I see constantly is people install backup software and never open the settings page. Do that part on day one.

Windows Privacy Dashboard, because Windows 11 talks too much

The complaint against Windows 10 and 11 that I actually agree with is the loss of control. Telemetry, automatic updates you can’t cleanly defer, ad suggestions in the Start menu. You can fight all of this through the registry and Group Policy, and I have, and I’ve broken things doing it.

Windows Privacy Dashboard (WPD) puts those same switches in one window with plain explanations. Block telemetry IP addresses. Freeze automatic updates. Turn off the advertising ID. Every option tells you what it does, so you don’t need to be a sysadmin to make a decision. It takes about two minutes.

This is genuinely one of the first apps I install on any PC, and UltrabookReview makes the same call. If WPD’s interface rubs you the wrong way, O&O ShutUp10 does roughly the same job with a different layout. Pick one. Don’t run both.

7-Zip, because Windows still can’t open a .rar

Windows has handled zip files natively for years. It still can’t touch RAR, 7z, or half the archive formats you’ll download this week. 7-Zip fixes that in about 1.5 MB of installer and zero dollars.

Right click any archive, extract where you want, done. It handles splitting large archives too, which matters if you ever move big files across a flaky connection. There’s no premium tier, no nag screen, no upsell to a “pro” version. It just works, which is exactly the point of a utility.

Notepad++ replaces the text editor you’re using out of habit

I used Windows Notepad for years because it was already there. Then it ate two hours of notes in a crash because nothing auto-saves.

Notepad++ is free under the GNU licence and autosaves. It has line numbers, which sounds like a developer feature until you’re staring at 400 lines of config and trying to find line 212. It has a session feature that reopens every tab you had open when you closed it. For a scratchpad, that changes how you use it. You stop closing things. You stop losing them.

Install it with the default options. The only setting I always change is turning off the update checker, because I check manually anyway and the popup is annoying.

IrfanView for anything image related

IrfanView is old. It looks old. It also opens a 40 MB photo instantly on hardware that makes modern image viewers stutter, and it does basic editing without a subscription.

Resize, crop, rotate, convert between formats, adjust brightness and contrast. It handles batch operations in a single dialog, which is where I get the most value from it. Converting 200 photos from PNG to JPG at a target size takes about four minutes on my machine. Photoshop wants a monthly fee for the same job.

What it doesn’t do is sketching or markup. No arrows, no text boxes, no circles around the thing you want someone to look at. You’ll still need Paint for that, or something like Pixlr if you want a browser-based option.

VLC, so you never think about codecs again

I have not found a video or audio file VLC refuses to play. That’s the whole pitch. You install it once, set it as the default player, and stop dealing with the “Windows Media Player can’t play this” message forever.

The feature I use more than I expected is the built-in subtitle search. Type the movie or show name, pick your language, and VLC finds and loads the subtitle file in a couple of clicks. VLC is open source and completely free. There is no paid tier, no premium upgrade bumping into you on launch. It’s been that way for years and there’s no sign of it changing.

Audacity for the audio you’ll eventually need to clean up

Windows has a voice recorder built in. It does not have an audio editor. If you record meetings, interviews, voice memos or a podcast, you’ll hit this wall quickly.

Audacity is the free open source answer. Normalise volume so a quiet voice and a loud cough don’t blow out someone’s headphones. Cut silence. Reduce background noise from a laptop fan. Combine two clips into one file. The interface is not pretty but it’s laid out sensibly and there are about four buttons you need for 90% of tasks.

One thing to know before you start: Audacity can’t export MP3 out of the box. You need to install the LAME MP3 encoder, a separate download from the Audacity site. It’s a one-time step and takes a minute. Skip it and you’ll record a file, try to export, and hit an error message that doesn’t explain itself well. Do it during setup.

WizTree, when Windows says your drive is full

Windows 11’s Storage settings tell you roughly what’s using your disk. They don’t tell you what specifically. You get “System” as a 60 GB category with no way to see inside it.

WizTree scans an SSD in seconds and shows you a visual map of what’s actually on the drive. Every file, sized proportionally, colour coded, organized by folder. I’ve found 8 GB video files I forgot existed and 30 GB of leftover game installs I thought I’d deleted.

You can rename, copy paths and delete files without leaving WizTree. It’s free for personal use and there’s a business licence if you’re using it commercially. It doesn’t replace judgement, though. A big folder in System32 is big for a reason. Don’t delete arbitrary things because they’re large.

HWiNFO if you want to know what your hardware is actually doing

If you ever wondered whether that new laptop is thermally throttling under load, HWiNFO answers the question. It reads every sensor on the board: CPU temperature, GPU temperature, fan speed, clock speeds, voltages, drive health.

You don’t need to run it constantly. Install it, open it after you notice something feeling slow, check the CPU temperature and clock speed under load. If the clock has dropped well below the rated boost speed, you have a cooling problem. That’s useful data when you’re deciding whether to return a machine or clean the vents. It’s free for personal use and the sensor list will overwhelm you the first time, but the numbers you actually need are easy to find once you know which ones they are.

ThrottleStop belongs on this list too if you’re on an Intel CPU from 9th gen or earlier. Undervolting on those chips can lower temperatures and stretch battery life with no performance cost if you get the offset right. Newer Intel CPUs generally have undervolting locked out for security reasons, so check your generation before you spend an evening on it.

What I skip and why

I don’t install a third-party antivirus on top of Windows Defender unless I have a specific reason. Defender is competent on Windows 11, and the paid alternatives add popups, upsells and browser extensions I don’t want. If you do want a second opinion scanner, Malwarebytes works as an on-demand tool without becoming your full-time antivirus.

I also skip driver updater utilities. They install the wrong driver often enough that the risk outweighs the convenience. Windows Update and the manufacturer’s own site handle this fine if you check them once every few months.

And I skip anything that advertises itself in a YouTube pre-roll. Utilities that pay for attention are usually monetising the user in some way that isn’t obvious at install time.

Order matters more than you’d think

Install Macrium Reflect first and take a clean image. Then install everything else on this list. Then take a second image. That second image is your “day one of a new PC” state, and restoring it is faster than any manual reinstall process you can build.

Total download size for everything here is under 300 MB. Total cost is zero if you use the free tiers of Macrium Reflect and WizTree. The whole setup takes less than an hour including the image, and it’s an hour that pays itself back the first time you break something.