How-to: Will my computer run Windows 7?
Most people will likely get their copy of Windows 7 as they purchase new computers. But those of us still running XP or Vista who just want to upgrade may need to know if their current setup will run Windows 7 successfully.
Microsoft has a set of minimum system requirements that you’ll need to have in order to upgrade your system (or if you’re building a new system). The OS is pretty forgiving for the most part, so if you’ve bought your computer in the past three or four years, you’re probably ok and shouldn’t have any hiccups. Keep in mind that minimum requirements are a far cry from suggested requirements. I’ve included a list of the requirements as set forth by Microsoft:
- 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
- 1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
- 16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)
- DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
Some of you may not know whether or not you have a 1 ghz processor or whether or not you have WDDM 1.0 or higher drivers. For those of you in this situation, allow me to present – Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.
This is a relatively simple to use tool that analyzes your PC’s configuration and tells you if you fall short in any of those categories. Just download the application, install it, run it, and it’ll tell you what you need to know. It would be nice if the file was an executable (.exe) that just ran, or there was a web-based way to check your system. But, at least it gives you the option to run the program immediately upon installation. Here are some screen shots from my test.
And I’m aware that there is less than 50 GB of free space on my machine…that’s just my system partition. I have plenty more storage space on separate drives.
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