Subscribe by EmailCan Your Machine Run Windows 7?
May 13, 2009 by Karl L. Gechlik | 9 comments
It’s that time again… If you have been reading [GaS], or any other blogs for that matter, you know that there will soon be a new version of the Microsoft operating system.
Now are you curious if your faithful machine can handle Windows Seven?
You are? Then we have a little application for you!
Microsoft has put out there Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta. You can grab it from here.
This 6.3mb file will run on Windows XP SP2 and Vista. XP machines will also need Dot Net 2.0 or higher. This is the same kind of application that came out when the Release Candidates of Vista were released a few years ago. The Vista Upgrade Advisor is still available here.
After downloading and installing this advisor we run it and see this:
Hit next and continue on… You know the drill.
Accept the license agreement and hit next. Then we will pick where we want to install it to.
After choosing your location, hit next and the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor (Beta) will continue and install.
When it’s done, leave the check box checked to launch the upgrade advisor automatically after hitting close. They also tell you to check for any dot Net Framework updates from Microsoft’s Windows Update.
As soon as you hit the button that says Start Check – that is exactly what will happen. Your machine will be tested in a few different areas and then a report will come back and let you know what’s up.
After waiting patiently (for almost 2 minutes!) my results popped up. As you can see below, my old Dell Dimension 4700 with 2GB of Ram passed, but the advisor says I cannot run Aero – but I already knew that from running the Vista advisor many moons ago.
So after clearing up some hard drive space to clear a whopping 16GB, I will be able to install the Windows 7 RC. I won’t be able to use Windows Aero however because my graphic card cannot support it. But I don’t really care as I would have disabled it anyhow!
Who else has already made the plunge? Let’s hear about it in the comments! Staying with XP or Vista for a specific reason? Let’s hear about it!
Karl Gechlik is a geek, a father and a devoted husband. He wears many hats and is constantly working on keeping something up and running or fixing other people’s mistakes. You can follow his antics at his personal blog located at http://www.askTheAdmin.com.
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I have not made the test, but I’m running Win7 since the official beta came out. I’ve enjoyed it more than vista and it runs a lot smoother (yes, even in beta).
I would suggest you guys to give it a try, wheather it’s in a virtual environment or your day to day PC, once you start using it you won’t wanna go back to vista.
Well my MacBook runs Windows 7 brilliantly on BootCamp…. It’s no Mac OS X but it’s nice and fast
I’m currently “testing” Win7 too for a couple of week.
I installed it in addition of my XP, in order to test it, but I’m always running on it :P
I have installed 7’s RC on a Dell Latitude D420 with a core duo 1.2GHz and 1.5GB RAM and I was very surprised to find that it actually runs well!!
It doesn’t run Aero either but everything else is running nicely and I haven’t had a crash yet!! I especially like the Search Federation function combined with this Flickr search web service: http://www.istartedsomething.com/flickrsearch/
I’ve had the beta (32-bit) running on an Acer Aspire 5110, Aero works (and I see no need to disable it), and I’ve got RC running on a new hard drive, that was originally slated for the RTM release, but the backup to install RC forced me to run a chkdsk /r, and went from 0 b bad sectors to over 1 MB bad sectors, so I decided it was time for it to go.
It runs better than the Vista I had when I got the thing. But my son installed it, and I really think the cruft of everything that he had installed was screwing it up. I turned ZoneAlarm’s firewall, as it was more of a pain that an actual help. I never got FTP working from a CMD prompt. Same .cmd worked with XP and 2003 XP (and now Win 7!)
I had to wait for a Windows Update to get a working Aero display (the Beta worked out of the box. :/, although now I’m running 64-bit after upgrading to 4GB from 2GB), and I already had the beta driver for the webcam.
The installer doesn’t work with Win XP 64bit pro
I’ve used windows 7 on my basic laptop and my main pc and it works flawlessly on both. i think this is gonna be a great os!! :-)
@Dennis Kaur: The only valid update is with Vista. Not even the Win 7 Beta. And you can’t change bit sizes when you do it.
I somehow didn’t download this Advisor tool correctly the first time. The only difference I can think of is that I didn’t download it with IE, but with Chrome. So first time it didn’t work.
Re-downloaded it with IE, got it running, and ran the test. It actually told me there would be some problems with Visual Studio 2005, which I found odd since that means Windows doesn’t always get along with other Windows software….
Anyway, tried to install Windows 7 RC on my secondary hard drive while I was still in Vista. It copied all the files and was 26% thru unpacking them when it shut down Vista with very little warning. It restarted and continued unpacking. Shortly after 39% it told me some of the files were messed up. It uninstalled itself and brought me back to the Welcome page in Vista. This was late last night so I haven’t had an opportunity to try to re-download RC or attempt to re-install. Nonetheless, this is legitimately fun!