What To Install Onto A Brand New PC

[danielm175]

Hello,

I am going to get my brand new gaming PC tomorrow. And I was just wondering what programs I should install on the machine like cleaners/anti virus checkers. I want to know this as I want to keep my new PC clean and safe as soon as I get it.

The programs which I will install onto the computer (please check if this is ok and safe for a brand new PC). Should I put more or less on or is this fine?

All of these programs will be downloaded of my USB stick onto the new PC. I downloaded these programs today to be ready to be installed on the PC tomorrow.

1) CCleaner
2) AVG
3) Glary
4) VLC (For videos)
5) ADW cleaner
6) Firefox (for web browsing as its better then internet explorer)
7) Steam (For my games etc)


Thanks

 

[WildCard999]

Depending on the brand of your gaming computer I would go through and get rid of the bloatware that may come with it. Also you may want to download the newer drivers for the motherboard/GPU as I'm sure what will be shipped with it will be out of date.

 

[volkgren]

uBlock Origin - FireFox Add-On for safe browsing. Blocks most scripts, tracking cookies, and adware that most webpages contain. It's better than No Script, another add-on that was previously considered the best.

AVG is okay. Windows Defender is just fine also. You would need to disable Win Defender if you use AVG.
CCleaner will clean the same things that ADW cleaner will clean, except more.
Glary.. never heard of it.
I'm not sure you need VLC with Windows 10, but you might idk.
I would add Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to your list for those times you suspect malware has been accidentally downloaded. It often finds it when anti-virus and other cleaning programs do not.

 

[USAFRet]

Also, go here for a lot of those utilities.
https://ninite.com/

Click click, get a small exe.
Run that, and it gets and installs the latest version of whichever applications you selected. Install, and bypasses any extra crapware that some of them might try to install.

 

[smorizio]

one tool is missing. a good backup software if there none on the pc or if the pc has no restore partion.

 

[geofelt]

No sense in installing cleaners if you have a new pc with nothing to clean.
That would include ccleaner, glary, adw cleaner and so on.
Past that, anything you install today will come with instrumentation that you do not want.

Windows defender works just fine and comes with windows. It does a reasonable job of detecting known viruses, not so much for "in the wild" viruses that nobody has seen before. I would not worry much about that.

I like malware bytes, but run it only on demand if you think you have malware. The monitoring function can be intrusive.

Talking about instrumentation, plan on getting rid of the default windows privacy settings.
There are many articles on this.
Here is just one example:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2971725/windows/how-to-reclaim-your-privacy-in-windows-10-piece-by-piece.html

 

[volkgren]

Tracking cookies and adware will inevitably get on your system if you browse the web even a little bit. But, a script blocker like the one I mentioned will keep >90% of them off your system. I'd still keep one cleaner to get the rest of them. CCleaner, ADW Cleaner, SuperAntiSpyware, etc. any of these would work. More than one is redundant.

*And as geofelt said, Malwarebytes AntiMalware is good to have, but they recently began forcing the Premium trial on the free version and it (the active monitoring) has gotten in the way of normal system functioning more than once for me or people who's system I care for. It's best to disable the premium right away. It's not necessary for users who don't go around clicking on malware constantly.