In general, if your PC can run Windows Vista, it can run Windows 7. But if you're not running Windows Vista, or are just not sure if your system is ready to run Windows 7, there's a quick way to do a simple check.
Just download, install, and run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta. You'll get a report telling you if your PC can run Windows 7, and if there are any known compatibility issues. If the issues can be resolved, you'll get suggestions for next steps. For example, it'll let you know if you need an updated software driver. You'll also get advice on how to upgrade to Windows 7.
Note: Information about your computer will be sent back to Microsoft; however, no information will be used to identify or contact you. For more information, read our privacy statement.
Before you begin
Before you run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor beta, be sure to plug in any USB devices or other devices such as printers, external hard drives, or scanners that are regularly used with the PC you're evaluating.
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Discuss this Article 37
This is such a rip-off of the Apple "Snow Leopard" Upgrade Advisor Beta! Way to copy again, Microsux....
:)
@yipcanjo
Oh-give me a break! There was a Windows Vista upgrade advisor, and before that (2001) a xp upgrade advisor...
Why can't you Apple fanboys find a mac site you can hang out at? This is getting so tedious....
"This is such a rip-off of the Apple "Snow Leopard" Upgrade Advisor Beta!"
Let me save you the trouble: If your Mac is 3 years old, you need a new one to run Snow Leopard.
Waethorn
"Let me save you the trouble: If your Mac is 3 years old, you need a new one to run Snow Leopard."
Actually, assuming the Intel-Only rumors are true (and there's a very high liklihood they are) you could have bought a very expensive Power Mac G5 less than 3 years ago - they were sold as late as August 2006 - and find you can't run Snow Leopard because your basic architecture has turned into abandonware.
yipcanjo: looks like sarcasm is lost on this one. or my sarcasm detector is broken and you're actually serious. either way.
@planetarian: No, it's not just you, I thought he was being sarcastic too. He even included a smiley face at the end, but perhaps the problem was that the smiley wasn't the "all-forgiving wink of forgiveness".
;)
Andreas J:
Actually, it's probably worth running anyway since it may identify apps or devices that have issues you haven't run into or updates you should get.
(I know I ran it on Windows 7 and it found updates for two apps I rarely use)
reads a full 11 on my tongue-in-cheek-o-meter.
Some people need to chill.
"Actually, assuming the Intel-Only rumors are true (and there's a very high liklihood they are) you could have bought a very expensive Power Mac G5 less than 3 years ago - they were sold as late as August 2006 - and find you can't run Snow Leopard because your basic architecture has turned into abandonware."
Typical. State rumors and morph them into "facts". Classic FUD, Mike, and you would scream bloody murder (and have in the past) if the tables were turned.
Apple has a very good record of supporting old hardware for a long time. I have OS X 10.5 running on a 5 year old PowerPC and it runs fine.
Much more interesting in the developing train wreck for the "XP in a box" mode in Win7. Not only do you need the right cpu to run it, you also need the right version of Win 7. When Apple did the same thing with Classic, it ran on every new Mac and there was only one version of the OS.
Microsoft, it seems, just can't help themselves. Needless complexity is built in. I don't know if it's evil or just stupid. Probably just stupid.
They even know this about their own company, but still can't stop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0
@mike:
I was talking about the Core 2 Duo iMac's, which according to losta's favourite resource of penultimate knowledge, Wikipedia, were released in Fall 2006. Given that Snow Leopard will probably ship in the same time of year this year, that would make the Core 2 Duo's exactly 3 years old. Anything a day older, like the Core Duo's, which don't support x64, wouldn't be supported on the new 64-bit kernel.
The G5 iMac's were replaced by the Core Duo iMac's in January of 2006, probably during MacWorld, as were the other systems. The PowerMac G5 wasn't replaced until Intel had the DP Xeon options for it.
"When Apple did the same thing with Classic, it ran on every new Mac and there was only one version of the OS."
Too bad it didn't work with half the OS 9 programs that were out.
"Needless complexity is built in."
Coming from someone an Apple advocate, that's funny. Take a look at Time Machine recently?
Oh for god's sake
QUIT THE FRICKING RELIGIOUS PLATFORM WAR ALREADY
seriously, you guys need therapy.
quick question:
Did the Windows Vista betas or RC's have CEIP turned on by default?
Just wondering....
Perhaps that would explain a few things?
@waethorn
"Coming from someone an Apple advocate, that's funny. Take a look at Time Machine recently?"
As a matter of fact, a Time Machine backup is running right now. It's so "complex" that I didn't even notice until I saw your post and looked at the Menubar indicator that shows a backup is in progress.
Yep, it's wickedly complex. I plugged in a USB drive, designated it as the backup drive with one click and have never had to fool with it since. And, yes, I have retrieved a few files from backups. That whole "timeline" concept is really a tough one, isn't it?
I ran the Windows 7 Upgrade advisor (yesterday) and it said the same thing as Vista's version did: I can upgrade. Well, "upgrade" in that I would have to do a clean-install, but some of my programs (TweakUI, and other non-critical programs) wouldn't work.
I really want to give Windows 7 RC a spin but until I find a way to create an ISO of my XP machine, I'm afraid I'll just have to wait :-(
"I really want to give Windows 7 RC a spin but until I find a way to create an ISO of my XP machine, I'm afraid I'll just have to wait "
Does Windows Backup support ASR on XP Home?
Regardless, if you don't have a floppy drive, you'd need a BIOS that supports a USB Floppy as drive A:, otherwise Windows Setup won't support ASR on your system.
Nevermind, ASR doesn't work on XP Home.
You can still use any NT Backup discs in Windows XP Home. You'd have to reinstall Home as a clean install, then install NT Backup from the ValueAdd folder off the disc, and then just do a restore from your data backup.
The instructions and workaround are here, and you don't need any additional software over what is provided with Windows:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302700
Of course, if you have XP Pro, you can just use ASR as normal (only if you have a floppy drive, as I explained above, or else just do the same thing as you would with XP Home).
....or if you have some advanced experience, you could use tools like ImageX in WAIK for advanced volume backup and restoration.
chuckb84, speaking of needless complexity - just try to fight the old issue with admin-privilege-requiring apps being run from autostart and WinDefender popping up its idiotic baloon every time Vista boots. Redmond morons who designed this "feature" and idiotic "workaround" through Task Scheduler shou've been put to sleep. I'm using Vista on all of my home machines but I have to agree with you on that one. Sometimes MS "design" is mind blowingly complex, just for the sake of it being complex. Alas.
"just try to fight the old issue with admin-privilege-requiring apps being run from autostart and WinDefender popping up its idiotic baloon every time Vista boots"
....or having to deal with idiotic complaints from people that don't know that you can specify that apps run with elevated privileges all the time, or that have Windows Defender scheduled to even run every time Windows starts up.
@ everyone
It was *totally* sarcasm, though I thought it'd be a bit more obvious. End of a long week, perhaps? :)
@gorath: driveimageXML looks interesting and it's free (for non-commercial usage), plus there's a step-by-step instruction post on Lifehacker on how to use driveimageXML.
@Waethorn: I'm running XP Media Center Edition. I wish I had advanced knowledge of computers and Windows. I guess you could say that I'm in between: I know more than others about computers and Windows, but at the same time I know less than others about computers and Windows.
I wish I was like one of those geeks that you can throw in a dark room (not that I'm advocating that) with a bunch of electronics and he comes out an hour later with a shiny new computer :-)
Thanks for the info guys!
"idiotic complaints from people that don't know that you can specify that apps run with elevated privileges all the time, or that have Windows Defender scheduled to even run every time Windows starts up."
Wae, you have no idea that you can't easily configure one specific app to run always without any UAC prompt if it needs admin privileges, short of disabling UAC altogether, and you also don't know that WinDefender checks autorun apps every boot by default, this is how Vista works.
Working around that is mind blowingly hard and requires lots of reading of technical docs. Typical MS as chuckb84 noticed.
I've been through that myself when I tried to run RivaTuner in Vista a couple of years ago. It was an absolute nightmare to configure autostart for that app so that WinDefender shuts up and stops bothering me with baloons at every boot.
@ chuckb84
"Yep, it's wickedly complex. I plugged in a USB drive, designated it as the backup drive with one click and have never had to fool with it since."
Leave poor Waethorn alone. I'm sure he perfectly happy with Volume Shadow Copy (or whatever it's called) and/or his nifty third party apps.
"you have no idea that you can't easily configure one specific app to run always without any UAC prompt if it needs admin privileges, short of disabling UAC altogether"
Ya, cuz you know that's why they don't have the option to enable administrative privileges for all users in the Compatibility tab of the program properties sheet.
You are clueless.
"you also don't know that WinDefender checks autorun apps every boot by default"
Show me a system where it pops up on every bootup and I'll see a hapless user in front of it demonstrating it to me.
"It was an absolute nightmare to configure autostart for that app so that WinDefender shuts up and stops bothering me with baloons at every boot."
Unless it's spyware, Windows Defender doesn't show you anything at startup when those apps load. What you are describing is UAC, and that can be disabled by enabling admin privileges for that app for all users. Some programs (usually sound driver control panels) will pop up with an Open/Run/Save-style dialog like what happens when you download in IE. Those will have this remarkable checkbox that says "Don't show me this message again". Guess what that does....
"I'm sure he perfectly happy with Volume Shadow Copy (or whatever it's called) "
Yup. No immature star fields for me.
Evil Microsoft: http://mashable.com/2009/05/07/mozilla-opera-windows-7/
Oh crappers... robertsjoe is back.... Paul! we need some moderators! :o
Waaaaaaah. Windows 7 is so complex. I don't even know where to start. I'm so used to Windows, I'll find OS X complex. There might be someone who is so used to OS X that they'll find Windows complex, but chuck, RTE, robertsjoe, and others detest Microsoft and Wae hates Apple, so they'll never admit it.
I think this is starting to get silly now. robertsjoe, go do your homework or maybe help mommy and daddy with their chores. You're too young to have this kind of an attitude towards life.
"Sometimes MS "design" is mind blowingly complex, just for the sake of it being complex."
I've said the same thing about my MacBook at times. Most recently when I uninstalled a VMWare incorrectly because Apple apparently refuses to integrate any sort of uninstallers into their UI and borked my BootCamp install in the process. Heck, any time I download something, have to unpack it, and then have to run an installer inside the unpacked drive, and then have to unmount the drive, and delete the image, I wonder what Apple was thinking.
This could be the #1 download for Microsoft considering 62% of Windows users are still running XP.
@wae I still post here, and recently. I not slimshadey as you and shark think. I dont like rap, I work at a financial institution, and slim is a windows fanboy like you. Maybe he is not as bad as you, but I think Vista sucks even today and 7 is nothing more than Vista finally up to XP performance. Just because I dont post here 10 times a day like you just means I have a life. I do like it that that slim pointed out what a complete f-tard Mikey G's is, so I got to give him some credit, maybe he is the real slimshadey:)
Time Machine was the best add on for Leopard. Its the most user friendly backup application for consumer hands down.
Peace out ladies!
lindy, I think you can stop this charade now. Either that or you're (that's the way they spell it, by the way, lindy and slim) schizophrenic.
By the way, when was the last time you used Vista? Did you use it in Oct 2007 too?
"maybe he is the real slimshadey"
White boys pretending to be black boys don't deserve to be in the rap scene, just like you, Lindy, don't deserve to be in IT.
