Install clean Windows 11 on new Scar 17 SE - pitfalls?

[Mr__Matt_Eastwo]

Hey guys, I bought a ROG Strix SCAR 17 (2022) (G733CX-LL016W). It has Win 11 pre-installed and the two 2 TB drives show as one mega large C drive in Windows. So I guess it's a RAID setup, which I'm really not familiar with.

I want to dual-boot with Linux, but it seems the Linux installer's partitioning tool can't deal with this SSD setup at all, it shows me 2 SSDs with strange paritions that don't match what I see in Windows' partitioning tool.

So I'm thinking of turning RAID off, installing a completely fresh Win 11 (also gets rid of all the bloatware, like McAffee and all that ****) on one of the two SSDs. Thing is, what should I keep in mind? Are there essential tools pre-installed on this laptop that will cause it to not work properly if I install a virgin, clean Win 11?

[xeromist]

Windows will have basic drivers for essential hardware. If you want to be proactive you can go to the support page for your machine and download all of the drivers onto an external USB. That way even if you don't have network/wifi working for some reason you will still have everything you need.