News of the upcoming 64 bit version of SAW has caused me to bulldoze my 4+ year old studio computer. So begins my walk down the garden path. Losing XP means losing my favorite "mondo desktop" trick where I could have a 2048x1536 desktop windowed in a 1280x1024 screen. I needed a much bigger display screen or multiple screens. The way my rig is laid out dictated the single large screen, so I went for an "ultrawide" 2500+ x 1080 (can't remember the exact horizontal res) screen. Then I discovered that the video card in my old computer could not match the resolution of that display. I would at least need a new video card.

Off to one of those computer stores that offers refurbished machines, where I got my next surprise. Everything they had available in my price range used proprietary power supplies, which could not be upgraded after the fact, and upgrade that would be demanded by any of the available video cards with the resolution I needed. That, and most of them could not accept a full height interface card (MOTU 424).

So, I gave in and went to a Best Buy to get a factory-built computer, complete with the usual bloatware and configuration problems, discovering also that a Win7 downgrade is no longer available, so stuck with the dreaded Win10. The good news was that the Lenovo "ideacentre 720-18asu" (Model 90H1000FUS) came with a video card instead of "onboard" video, and the video card is fanless. The only fan in the thing is the cpu fan, and the unit is very quiet.

So, now to tame the software setup. Here is where I need some guidance. Microsoft offers the option of running a "clean install" of Win10, which wipes out everything on the machine that was not part of the operating system install itself. This apparently means that all of the factory bloatware goes away, but so too do any drivers specific to the machine. My guess is this means I will need to manually install drivers for the mobo chipset and other features, as well as for the video card.

Which brings me to another caveat: I recently learned from a PC repair guy that he has been getting a lot of business fixing machines that get "broken" by Windows Update. Why? Because the manufacturers of computers sometimes change brands of certain components in the middle of a model year, and MS doesn't know about it, so Windows Update will grab wrong drivers that don't fit what is actually on the machine. This means I absolutely must prepare in advance by making sure that I have copies in hand of all the needed drivers BEFORE I run the "clean install".

What is currently the best free tool for scanning the computer to determine what drivers are needed for everything on it, and what is the best way to acquire/download said drivers before running the OS install?

Also, how small can I make the C partition and still leave enough room for necessary future "growth" of the OS and core applications?
If I do a separate partition for audio apps like SAW/SAC, what is a good size for that?
And, is it save to use a 3rd party tool like Acronis (something free) to shrink the boot partition more than Windows10 itself will do?

Thanks in advance for any and all sage advice.