Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Tool

Posted by dkszone 2 years ago

Upgrade Advisor is a free tool provided by Microsoft to let users check if their PC can run Windows 7 and give a report of any existing compatibility issues. It also gives upgrade options and suggestions as to how to resolve issues, for e.g., informing the user if his PC requires a new USB driver etc.

This tool is especially useful for Windows XP users who are looking to move onto Windows 7. They would be required to do a clean install of Windows 7. Vista users can be assured of a smooth upgrade to 7.

The tool analyzes your PC’s hardware as well as installed software. It compares the hardware with the system requirements of Windows 7 which are:

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

Before you run this tool make sure you have plugged in any external devices that you regularly use with your PC, like any USB devices, printers, external hard disks etc. A scanning of the installed drivers and other software lets the tool bring out any compatibility issues to the fore and suggest resolutions if possible.

Download the Upgrade Advisor

A beta version of this tool is available for download.
File Name: Windows7UpgradeAdvisor.msi
Download Size: 6.3 MB
Language: English

Run the Upgrade Advisor

System Requirements for running the Advisor:

Windows 7; Windows Vista; Windows XP Service Pack2
.NET 2.0 Framework or higher if running on Windows XP
Internet Connection is a must while running this tool

After installation, the tool connects to Microsoft and sends information about your PC. It took us around 5 minutes to get the analysis results.

Our test PC has Windows XP and as expected the tool advises clean installation of Windows 7. Only Vista users can really ‘upgrade’ their PCs to 7. It also points out the hard disk space requirement of 16 GB which is not met on our test PC.

As you scroll down the report, it shows a list of installed devices on your PC and their compatibility with Windows 7. In our case no device issues are shown. However the tool recommends a windows update after installing Windows 7 to make these devices compatible. You can export the results to a web archive file (.mht) or a web page (.htm or .html).