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.

That’s right! Windows Vista can run using a total of zero system memory. Well, bear with me, it will all make sense in the end. When it first introduced Windows Vista, Microsoft faced criticism because of the system requirements associated with the new platform. And the truth of the matter is that Vista is nothing short of a resource hog. The latest operating system from the Redmond company will eat right through CPU cycles, and will swallow every last bit of Random Access Memory you can throw at it. Vista will hesitate little to consume all the resources at its disposal in order to deliver the high-end performance level and user experience synonymous with the Wow.

The system requirements for Vista are divided according to SKU. There are the recommended minimum hardware requirements valid for Windows Vista Home Basic and Starter editions, and then the standard is raised when it comes to the Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs. According to Microsoft, Vista can go as low as an 800-MHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor and 512 MB of RAM. But this does not mean that users cannot feed some 3.5 GB of RAM into 32-bit editions of Vista and up to 128 GB in the 64-bit versions. (more…)

64 bit, cpu cycles, kernel memory, microsoft, performance level, photoshop skills, system memory, system requirements, vista, Windows, windows task manager, zero system

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Whether you are seriously considering moving your desktops to Windows Vista or just simply contemplating about it, I highly encourage you to grab your favorite latte or beverage, sit back and read about this great story – one that illustrates how an IT pro had become an instant hero in this company.

Meet Sumeeth Evans - IT Manager of the Collegiate Housing Services (CHS).  Situated just about 2 hours south of the Great Lake Michigan, CHS manages student housing programs for 27 post-secondary campuses in 13 states across the nation.  Late last year (2006), Sumeeth started planning for migrating his company’s computers to Windows Vista but estimated that it could cost $76,000 to get the job done – he assumed that most of his Windows XP machines might not support Windows Vista due the hardware requirements.  Fortunately, he joined the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment beta program and found out after using this assessment tool that 70% of his 3-year-old Windows XP machines could run Windows Vista with no or only minor upgrades!  Yes, that’s the majority of his PCs!

Needless to say, his manager was pleasantly surprised with the readiness results and the huge savings in the hardware replacement costs that Sumeeth virtually became the IT HERO of the company! 

Wanna be an IT hero too? Read on and find out how he did it:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=93644

To become an IT HERO yourself, download Windows Vista Hardware Assessment for free and get the tool here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83115

Cheers,

Baldwin Ng

Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators

Hi all, Whether you are seriously considering moving your desktops to Windows Vista or just simply contemplating about it, I highly encourage you to grab your favorite latte or beverage, sit back and read about this great story – one that illustrates Read More……(read more)

The wait is over!  The Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team is pleased to announce the newly-released Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 with many of the features YOU have been looking for.  For example, we’ve added features such as localization to 6 more languages in addition to North American English, IP range scanning and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) detection of non-Windows machines and network devices.  These are excellent features to help you speed up your migration projects to Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office!

For the newcomers of the Windows Vista Team Blog, let me give you a brief overview and show you what Windows Vista Hardware Assessment solution accelerator can do for you. Of course, if you can’t wait, just click HERE to download the tool. That’s okay too. :-)

In a nutshell, Windows Vista Hardware Assessment is an automated software tool that helps business customers and consultants make informed decisions about desktop deployment and migration to Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office.  Specifically, this tool provides users a very quick way to inventory and assess PCs network-wide for their hardware and device readiness (within an hour if you have a network of about 500-1000 PCs).  Through auto-generated readiness reports, organizations can more quickly identify computers that can migrate to Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office “as is” without any hardware upgrades and other computers that could be migrated with very minimum hardware upgrades such as system memory and hard drive upgrades.  This tool is now used by many large and small enterprises and it can scan 25,000 PCs in a single scan per domain/workgroup and can run multiple scans for a larger organization as well.

FIGURE 1: Screenshot of the Welcome Screen - French Version of Windows Vista Hardware Assessment

FIGURE 2: Screenshot of the Japanese Windows Vista Readiness Report

In this new release of version 2.1, we have added 3 major features that address many of the customer and partner feedback that we’ve collected for the past months:

• Localization to 6 New Languages: With Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office going to all corners of the world, we’ve decided to globalize the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool. Now, you can not only operate this tool with your OS but you can also generate readiness report in Microsoft Word and Excel in your local languages including French, German, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. This makes this tool and the reports more impactful when presented to the technical and business decision makers.
• IP Range Scanning: This feature is one of the most frequently requested features from our customers (you!) and this IP range scanning capability allows you to select a set of computers for the readiness assessment independent of whether you are using Active Directory or not - especially useful in many branch office assessment scenarios! This nicely complements other ways to target machines for assessment including the Active Directory Organizational-Unit targeting and flat-file import method.
• SNMP Discovery: While many of your computers are Windows-based, we do know that our customers and partners would like to assess the ENTIRE network environment. So with this new SNMP discovery feature, you will now have the ability to discover and assess machines running non-Windows OS that are SNMP-enabled. It also paves a way for you to understand the network devices as well. Very cool feature in my opinion!

For more details, please view the content on TechNet or check out my previous blog in July. 

Most importantly, over 240,000 users have downloaded this tool since February 2007.  Many customers have already saved significant of migration costs and accelerated their migration using this tool - such as Sporton International and Collegiate Housing Services. 

So why wait?  Download Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 Now!

To read the TechNet overview in the 6 new languages, please click one of the links below: 

• TechNet France
• TechNet Germany
• TechNet Japan (available in the next 24 hours)
• TechNet Korea
• TechNet Latin America (Spanish)
• TechNet Brasil

Have a great weekend everyone!

Baldwin Ng

Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Solution Accelerators

wvhafdbk@microsoft.com

The wait is over! The Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team is pleased to announce the newly-released Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 with many of the features YOU have been looking for. For example, we’ve added features such as localization to 6 Read More……(read more)