Posted 10/23/09 at 12:00:00 PM by David Murphy

What's the first thing you're going to do after installing the Windows 7 operating system?  If you live in Japan, perhaps you'll go celebrate your new, wallpaper-shifting desktop with some cardiac arrest.  If you're one of the stalwarts still clinging to your XP or Vista operating system, well, you're probably going to spin your chair around in smug defiance of Microsoft's latest bit of software.  And if you're a Maximum PC reader, I would hope that you're going to treat your fresh new installation of Windows 7 as an October spring cleaning of-sorts.

In fact, I urge you to.  One doesn't often get a chance to reinstall an operating system from scratch.  Or, rather, it's always easier to think of the hundreds of reasons why it's just not the right time to wipe-and-reinstall the contents of your primary hard drive.  Resist the temptation to take the easy route.  Backup your drive, give it a good format, and install Windows 7 onto your clean-as-a-whistle partition.

And once you've done that, read the rest of this article.  While my colleagues at Maximum PC have given you some good first steps into your new Windows 7 world post-installation, I'd like to go one bit further and list out my typical post-installation routine for any Windows operating system.  There are a number of key freeware choices that you'll want to slap onto your system to establish a baseline environment that's as efficient as it is secure--that, and you should really take this time to establish preventative measure that will keep your PC as clutter-free as can be throughout its new Windows 7 lifespan.

After all, bloated systems make Kylie sad.

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