💻 What’s the First App You Install on a Fresh Windows Machine?

[asadalikhan]

Hey everyone,

You just set up a brand new Windows PC or did a clean install… now comes the fun part: installing your go-to apps!

👉 What’s the very first app you install — and why?

It could be:

Your favorite browser (Chrome, Firefox, Brave?)

A trusted antivirus or security tool

An essential productivity app

Something for customization or system tweaking

Or maybe even something niche most people wouldn’t think of

For me, it’s always ShareX — I can't live without that screen capture tool. Then comes Brave for browsing and VLC for media.

Would love to hear what’s in your "must-install immediately" list!
Let’s swap recommendations — you might just discover a tool you didn’t know you needed.

[Reverend Jim]

First app is Macrium Reflect so I can take an image of the fresh install. Then I repartition to C/D, move my user folders (documents, pictures, etc.) to D. Then I take another image. After that I begin installing my base apps before imaging one more time.

[Reverend Jim]

Further note: Because Microsoft insists on crammine OneDrive down our throats, moving the My Documents is damn near impossible. I've found the easiuest way is to initially set up my computer using a Microsoft Account (something they have also made it almost impossibole to avoid), then create a local admin account and always log on with that. That results in several plusses:

1. I can always log on to the MS account if the local account goes belly up
2. I can now easily relocate the user folders to D
3. OneDrive no longer runs

My problems with OneDrive are numerous. The reason I put all my user folders on D is so that I can restore an image to C if necessary without losing any user files. With OneDrive active, anything that goes into My Documents gets stored on C. Not only that, but those files get copied to the MS cloud. Not only is the cloud not secure, but online services (particularly MS) have a habit of shrinking the quota or charging for storage after first offering it for free.

[Dani]

• Microsoft Office (for macOS)

And then to manage DaniWeb:

• PhpStorm
• Remote Desktop Manager
• Viscosity
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider

[Dani]

Jim, I have not used Windows in a very, very long time, but can you not configure Windows to store My Documents on D? I'm quite sure that you can, if I remember correctly?

https://superuser.com/questions/1725456/wha-cant-i-move-my-documents-folder

[Reverend Jim]

I'm quite sure that you can, if I remember correctly?

Before OneDrive it was easily done. Not anymore.

Microsoft is slightly brain dead. Locations for shell folders are stored in the registry. You'd think they'd all be under "Shell Folders", but not all of them are. And you'd think they would have consistent names. But here are the relevent entries

1.  My Music        B:\My Music
2.  My Pictures     C:\Users\rjdeg\OneDrive\Pictures
3.  My Video        D:\My Videos
D.  Personal        C:\Users\rjdeg\OneDrive\Documents

Note that I numbered the entries the way Microsoft might. Seriously? What should be "My Documents" is called "Personal"? Not to mention, the shell folder "Downloads" is not there. Here's the kicker. You can select properties for any shell folder and the location tab shows something like

You can change the location for some folders but you get an error for others, even though the change location option is still presented. And the error message makes no sense. It complains about a duplicate folder when none exists. Without creating a local account (I didn't know about this when I last installed Windows) I had to resort to going to C:, renaming the target folder to <folder>.old, then creating a junction (hard link) to my equivalent folder on D:

Unfortunately, when you try to save to My Documents it still thinks you are saving on C:. It actually goes to D: but it is still confusing. Also, the actual folder is named "Documents", not "My Documents" with appropriate adjustments being made according to the hidden desktop.ini file. What an abortion of a file system.

And OneDrive is impossible to uninstall or disable.

[Reverend Jim]

BTW I've spoken with a former Microsoft Engineer. He also agrees OneDrive is an abomination.