Hello everyone!

I have just purchased this computer here:

https://www.microcenter.com/product/...r-(refurbished

It has now arrived and with my monitors arriving tomorrow, I was wondering if I can just connect it and start playing or do I need to set something/anything up? I am lacking greatly in technical computer skills. Do I need to purchase an antivirus? No idea what to do, please help.

Thank you

When you turn it on for the first time, you should be asked to set up windows. simple, self explanatory process. you don't need to know your key, it's already saved on a chip on your motherboard. if it asks, say you already have a key. I recommend you do the first set up without connecting your system to the internet (either with cable or wifi). when it asks for you to connect, say you don't have internet and you want to continue with the limited setup. Decline when it asks you about the digital assistant and turn everything off in the privacy settings. It will then restart and finally take you to windows. Then you can plug the cable or connect to wifi and continue with the following;

make sure you run windows updates and are up to date, might take a while
bottom left corner, where you see a search box, click and type check for updates, you will see it in the list, click and run updates, let it do its thing, it will restart the pc a few times, don't worry about it. keep going to check for updates until it says you are up to date.

you then need to go to HP's website and look for the BIOS driver for your model
https://support.hp.com/ro-en/drivers...tor-pc/5387475
only download and install the bios one, the rest you will sort out another way

download and install this https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...rt/detect.html
it will auto detect out of date drivers and install recent ones and it will keep checking every month or so

take a look at https://www.windowscentral.com/tips-...plan_windows10 and follow steps 11,12 and 13 for a more snappy windows experience. Same goes for any poker clients you run, disable animations and transparency effects in their settings.

as far as getting an antivirus, I think the one that comes with windows is good enough these days but for your piece of mind, you can get bitdefender, it's light on system resources and relatively cheap
https://www.bitdefender.com/solution...-security.html

don't install any application if you don't know what it is, don't click on links in e-mails promising you free iphones and other shady stuff like that

Thank you ionutd!! I will do so upon arrival. I will then specifically post a thread with your name in it so you can see the setup!

Disabling indexing is not a great idea on an SSD based system. Searches are much faster when files are indexed. Indexing can be annoying on an HDD based system. None of those settings tweaks are really necessary on a reasonably high performance system, which your desktop definitely qualifies as.

Windows Defender is an adequate AV program and is free with Windows. Start with that and change programs if you feel the need later.

@headtrauma

Thank you for the response! So are you suggesting to not do anything besides installing Windows Defender? I'll add that I literally have no technical skills as it pertains to computers so I just need to know if I can just power it on, install Windows Defender, and go about playing.

Steve

If the refurbisher didn't install other AV software, Defender is included and installed by default in Windows 10.
Run Windows update, ionutd's BIOS and driver update steps are good too, run those next.

The other tweaks are more gray area. If you're not experiencing any performance problems, I'd just leave them alone.

at least transparency I'd always kill , that will make a difference, mby not now, but at some point down the road.

same for poker software you use, esp if you play a lot of tables
disable animations and transparency