Phanatique

CHAPTER 1 (Go to: INTRO CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3  CHAPTER 4)

The “good-to-know” part, preparations, requirements, tools and advices (you can skip this part if you think you know them, still it is good to revise from time to time)

The first thing to do is to verify that you have the minimal hardware requirements needed to run the OS on your PC or laptop, and to get a copy and a license for your operating system. According to Microsoft, Windows 7 system – hardware – requirements (read more about what system requirements means here) are covered by the majority of the PCs and laptops sold in these days. Below you will find a list with these requirements, an easy utility  (software) to test if your PC or laptop is compatible with Windows 7 provided by Microsoft and easy explanations about every single one of them.  The tool which will test the compatibility of your system with Windows 7 will be detailed in the final part of this chapter, as we need to understand first exactly what it does. Furthermore, we will provide another tool to check exactly what your system contains, what kind of components are inside your PC, and what technical specifications they have. This tool is not really necessary to use and also needs some additional knowledge, use it only if it is needed (some scenarios included in the final part) or if you are curious about it and what exactly your PC has “under the hood”. So, let’s see what we need to install Windows 7:

• 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor – this means that any processor bought in the last 2-3 years (as of the date hereof) will be compatible. The difference between 86-bit and 64-bit processors is translated in performance, 64-bit processors provide more power and more features than 32-bit processors. Nothing to worry about, both of them are fully supported. Please note that 64-bit processors are recommended, as Windows 7 will fully utilize the capabilities of such processors. Further reading about processors here.

• 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit) – this is the amount of the volatile memory (a form of computer data storage, every single PC is equipped with it – do not confuse it with your hard drive) required to run the OS. RAM data is called volatile because every time you turn of your PC (or in case of a power loss), the data stored within disappears. The higher this amount is the better, as Windows 7 (and virtually all installed programs) will make use of it all the time. To be perfectly honest, we would double the amount of RAM required, just because the operating system is simply not enough for a daily use of your PC to cover all your needs. You will use other software products (in some way or another), and for this, 1GB (x86) or 2GB (x64) is simply not enough. Don’t worry, today’s PCs are equipped with sufficient RAM to run the OS and other software products, and older ones can easily be upgraded with low costs. Further reading about RAM memories here.

• 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit) – this will be your hard drive (HDD), the non-volatile storage inside your PC. The hard drive stores your data (movies, music, pictures etc) so you can use them at any time, even if you turn of your PC. If you bought your PC in the last 4-5 years, nothing to worry about, your hard drive capacity will have to be enough. The “good to know” part here is that the newer your hard drive is, the better, because of its performance, even if a 5 years old HDD has the same capacity as a 1 year old HDD, the 1 year old HDD will be faster, providing better performance. If you know some details about your HDD you can consult a list provided by Microsoft here and check if it’s compatible with Windows 7. You can also use the tool we mentioned before to check your hard drive specifications, but we will speak about it a little later, at the end of this chapter. Further reading about hard drives here.

• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver – this is your graphic adapter (also called: video card, video adapter, graphics-accelerator card, display adapter or graphics card), the component of your PC that displays the actual image on your screen and processes it. The problem with graphic adapters is that there are a lot of them, a lot of types, models and manufacturers and could get difficult to know if your graphic adapter is fully compatible. For a fully functional Windows 7 with all the graphic features enabled, we usually need a middle-end graphic adapter, but the term “middle-end” is quite relative, since there are some technical specifications of the adapter that makes it “middle-end”. We won’t complicate things with types and models and specs of these adapters, we will simply use the tool Microsoft provides to check its compatibility. If you know some details about your graphic adapter you can consult a list provided by Microsoft here and check if it’s compatible with Windows 7. You can also use the tool below to check your graphic adapter specifications.  Further reading about graphic adapters here.

• Of course, an optical storage device that will read the contents of the installation DVD (CDs are not available). There is a list of these devices as well here.

TOOLS

As we mentioned before, we will make use of 2 programs to check the compatibility of your hardware with Microsoft’s Windows 7, both x86 and x64 versions. Note that the results returned by the first one, named “Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor” are relative; they are not 100% accurate. This means that it could return false positives or false negatives, but it surely can provide a good idea about our issue. This is the reason why it’s good to know what exactly we have inside our PC and Google search about it if “Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor” tells us that some of our components are not compatible. We will use the second tool for this named “HWiNFO32”.

INFO: Drivers are special kind of software needed by the operating systems (and also users) to make us of devices inside (or connected to) your PC or laptop or even your smartphone. Without drivers, you could not use your webcam, printer, or listen to music and watch movies. These kind of software are mandatory for a fully functional PC. Read more about drivers here.

NOTE: Drivers (and software) for x86 and/or x64 versions of Windows are typically 2 different downloads as well, for the same component we may find a driver version for x86, and another (different from x86), for x64, though we may find drivers for both of the versions in the same “package”. For an easy reading, we will simply use “Windows” for both x86 and x64.

1)      “Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor” is a software that will scan your PC for incompatibility issues with your hardware, connected devices such as printers, faxes, external hard drives, scanners, cameras etc  and also software for both x86 and x64 versions of Windows 7. For this to work, plug in all your USB devices before running this tool and do not disconnect your PC from the internet. Download it from this location and install it as follows:

• Accept the terms and click “Install”:

• Run it and click “Start check”:

• The results look like this:

Click on “See all system requirements” to analyze the entire report. The report will contain results for both x86 and x64 hardware and software requirements. We will concentrate though only on the hardware results and for this, click on “Back to overview”, scroll down to “Devices” category and click on “See all devices”. This is the part we are interested in, since software incompatibilities can easily be solved by other means like installing versions of software compatible with Windows 7 or by running software in “Windows XP” or “Windows Vista” compatibility mode, but we will talk about this later in details.

“See all devices” will display a list of hardware components as well as connected devices that are or aren’t compatible with Windows 7. There will be rare cases when a device is not compatible or cannot be made compatible by installing compatible drivers. Still, there is a chance for this, and of course, we have to find a solution for these problems. The paradox in these situations is the solution itself, there is no other way to find a solution without installing Windows 7. “Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor” will use a Microsoft database of devices to match the results, and if a match is found, the response is positive, if not, negative. It usually displays some workaround or some information for any issues found. As we mentioned before, these responses can be false, so again, to find a solution we must install Windows 7. This tool will present a general overview about your system, as a routine check, and almost all the time when something is found incompatible it can be made compatible by finding and installing compatible drivers. We will speak about drivers in the “Drivers” chapter.

IMPORTANT: It is extremely important to check your wired or wireless network adapter compatibility. Without an internet connection you will not be able to search drivers, find and read solutions for other compatibility issues, unless you have a second PC connected to the internet. If your wired or wireless network adapter is found incompatible, use your current version of your OS to find a compatible one. Also don’t forget to copy it on a portable memory device (USB Memory Stick, External Hard Drive, Floppy Disk, CD, DVD, anything that you can use) or even on another partition, other than the boot partition on which we will install the new OS. If you don’t know what model/type/brand of wired or wireless network adapter you have, read below to get help on how to find it.

2)      “HWINFO32” is the second tool we will speak about will check the components and their specifications inside your PC. It’s a powerful system information tool for Windows. We will use this tool in the “Drivers” chapter as well to find components that are not recognized by Windows 7 or generally find drivers for specific components.  We can also use this tool to start searching drivers for incompatible hardware components found by “Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor”, which usually displays generic names for components found incompatible. For an accurate driver search, we have to look after the exact component name, chipset etc.  We will compare the results from these 2 tools and build a list of components to search and find drivers for.

Download it here (select a location closer to you). There are usually 3 versions of HWiNFO32 listed, the recommended one is the “Self-installing EXE”. Install it by clicking “Next” on every window, and run the tool, 2 windows will appear. Follow these instructions to check your components:

• Close the big window:

• On the left of the second window that appeared there is a list with everything your PC has inside:

This is the list we are interested in. Let’s take one of the components listed here, which is the network adapter, maybe the most important component for us to work after installing Windows 7. In this example you will see a Marvell Yukon 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller. “Marvell Yukon” is the name of the network adapter, and “88E8055” is the chipset used for this specific adapter. This is usually the “name structure” of every component of your PC; this is what we also need. Let’s presume that this adapter is not compatible with Windows 7 and we have to find a driver for it. The easiest way is to navigate to the manufacturer’s website and look for it. If a component is part of a laptop, we should first try the laptop’s manufacturer support site, find the model of your laptop and look for a Windows 7 compatible driver for this network adapter. As an example, we should navigate to www.laptopmanufacturer.xyz, search for the support link, find the laptop model and download the compatible driver. If there is no Windows 7 compatible driver for our adapter, we move forward and navigate to the adapter manufacturer’s website, which is, in our case, Marvell: http://www.marvell.com -> Support -> Drivers, search for the “88E8055” model for Windows 7 and download it. If we still don’t find any driver for our adapter that is compatible with Windows 7, Google search for it! Try any terms you like, our suggestion would be, for this example: “Marvell 88E8055 Windows 7 x86 driver” (or x64).

These are the steps you should follow for finding drivers for any of your device.

TIPS:

• “Windows Update” inside Windows 7 it’s also a huge database of drivers, different and a lot more comprehensive than Windows XP or Vista’s “Windows Update”, you can use it with confidence to automatically download and install drivers for your PC. Remember, you need an internet connection for this (and of course an already installed network adapter).
• If you had absolutely no results in finding a compatible driver for your device with Windows 7, usually drivers for Windows Vista should also work. Note that this is an extreme resolution and should only be used if there is no hope in finding a specific driver for Windows 7.
• You can try third party software to look for drivers, but more about this in the “Drivers” chapter.

CHAPTER 1 (Go to: INTRO CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3  CHAPTER 4)

Tags: advices, Easy, guide, Installation, preparations, prerequisites, requirements, step by step, tools, Windows 7

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