Preparing for Windows 7 with the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

Posted by:
Brandon LeBlanc
03:45 PM Thursday
May 07, 2009
91 Comments

When a new version of Windows is released, people either upgrade their existing PC or purchase a new PC with the latest version of Windows already pre-installed. For the people who want to upgrade their existing PC, they are often faced with the question of whether their PC can run the new Windows version or not. As we announced last week, Microsoft plans to offer a tool that can be used to determine if a PC is able to run Windows 7– Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.

A beta of Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is now available to help people analyze their PC in preparation for a Windows 7 upgrade. Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is a free tool that people can download as of today to help them determine if their PC is able to upgrade to and run Windows 7. The beta can be downloaded here (English only at this time).

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor examines a PC’s processor, memory, storage, and graphics capabilities, identifies known compatibility issues with installed software and devices and finally provides guidance on how to resolve those issues if possible. Please also note: as previously stated on the E7 blog, Windows XP users are required to do a clean install of the Windows 7 RC as well as the final product. Only PCs with Windows Vista can be upgraded to Windows 7.

After running Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor myself, the initial results of my scan can be seen in the below screenshot.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor measures a PC’s ability to upgrade to Windows 7 based on the following final system requirements for Windows 7:

1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit)
16GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20GB (64-bit)
DirectX® 9 graphics processor with WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) 1.0 or higher driver

In this screenshot, you can see how my PC has passed all the Windows 7 system requirements.

Before you run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta , be sure that you plug in any USB devices or other devices such as printers, external hard drives, or scanners that are regularly used with the PC you are evaluating. The screenshot below shows all the devices attached to my PC when I did the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor scan.

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is easy enough for any PC user to use in evaluating the ability of a PC to install and run Windows 7.

Tags: Announcement, Beta, Windows 7, Windows 7 RC, Upgrade, System Requirements, Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

Comments

mohab1220

Posted on: May 07, 2009 at 5:39PM
nice nice nice

thank you
Behodar

Posted on: May 07, 2009 at 7:44PM
I just downloaded this and tried to run it, and got an error stating that it could not find an Internet connection. My guess is that the tool isn't respecting my proxy configuration, can anyone confirm that this is the issue?
newscientist2000

Posted on: May 08, 2009 at 1:56AM
Should be a useful tool that will help people decide whether they need to upgrade their older machine to Windows 7, or simply buy a new PC with Windows 7.
Michael REMY

Posted on: May 08, 2009 at 2:43AM
hi !

i don't think the Upgrade Advisor is really needed.

I just installed Windows Seven on a small & low hardware configuration (acer aspire one, netbook) and it runs perfectly ! Even quicker than Vista !

So, if it can run easily on this netbook, all the recent PC will be acceptable for Windows Seven !

Have a good day !
zed260

Posted on: May 08, 2009 at 10:36AM
does it tell you if you can get the drivers for the 64 bit windows
505909

Posted on: May 08, 2009 at 11:22AM
Non standard command area background, non standard toolbar, custom back button instead of using the standard. HIDEOUS design. Someone needs to smack whoever put that together.
Charles Boykin

Posted on: May 10, 2009 at 10:44AM
This machine is running RAID 5 on a NVIDIA 680i chipset. The current RAID driver in Win 7 RC is not compatible. It degrades the RAID by taking a drive out of the array. The advisor does not flag this problem.

Trackbacks

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