Twenty years ago, you set up a new computer from a disc in an hour. Today, installing the system itself is the shortest stage, and the whole day is taken up by everything that happens around it.
Where the time goes
- Accounts. On first start-up, the system leads you to create an account with the manufacturer. In a company, this is usually the wrong path: an employee's private account on company hardware means that after they leave, nobody can get into the computer or the encrypted drive.
- Drive encryption. It often switches itself on. The recovery key ends up in an account that nobody in the company has access to. This is the most common reason why a working computer becomes useless.
- Data transfer. Files are the simplest part. Email, saved passwords, signatures, templates and software licences tied to the old hardware are harder.
- Software added by the manufacturer. It has to be removed, and some of it comes back with the first update.
- Licences. The office suite bundled with a laptop is often a version that expires after a year. It is worth establishing this before, not after.
What cannot be skipped today
Windows 10 no longer receives security updates: support ended in October 2025. A computer running this system still turns on and still works, but every new vulnerability stays in it for good. On hardware that runs the accounts or the email, this is not a matter of convenience.
Some older computers do not meet the requirements of Windows 11. Then there is a real choice: replace the hardware or move that workstation to tasks that do not involve access to company data.
How we set it up
- The administrator account belongs to the company, not to the employee. The employee gets their own account without permission to install anything they like.
- We save the encryption recovery key in two places, one of which is outside that computer.
- Backup works from day one, not "when there is a moment". While doing so, we check one thing that people forget: whether a file can actually be restored from it.
- An inventory: what is where, what passwords it has and when the licences expire. It stays with the owner.
The most expensive scenario
It is not a hardware failure. It is a computer set up by someone who has left, with no written-down administrator password and with the encryption key in their private mailbox. Recovering such a workstation can cost more than a new computer, and sometimes it is simply impossible.
Hardware setup on site at the client's premises
See how we do it