Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Windows 7 Requirements

To plan deployment, you must understand the deployment requirements for Windows 7. The following sections describe the minimum hardware requirements and the migration paths for Windows 7. For more information about Windows 7 hardware requirements and editions.

Hardware Requirements

Table below describes the minimum hardware requirements for installing Windows 7. Part of the Project Planning SMF is collecting a hardware inventory. Compare the hardware requirements in Table below show to your hardware inventory to identify any computers that require upgrades or replacements.

Minimum Hardware Requirements for Windows 7 Computers

Hardware	Minimum Requirement
Processor	1 GHz or faster 32-bit or 64-bit processor
Memory	1 GB for 32-bit computers, or 2 GB for 64-bit computers
Graphics Processor	DirectX 9 graphics processor with Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.0 or later driver
Free Hard Disk Drive Space	16 GB

Note The minimum requirements for Windows 7 are the same across all editions.

Upgrade Paths

Table below describes the Windows 7 upgrade and migration paths. As shown in the table, performing an in-place upgrade from Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later to Windows 7 is supported. This means you can install Windows 7 on a computer running Windows Vista with SP1 and retain your applications, files, and settings. Using Windows Easy Transfer or the USMT to migrate user states from Windows XP to Windows 7 is also supported.

Windows 7 Migration Paths

From	Upgrade to Windows 7?	Migrate to Windows 7 Using Windows Easy Transfer?	Migrate to Windows 7 using the USMT?
Windows XP with SP2 or later	No	Yes	Yes
Windows Vista with SP1 or later	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows 7	Yes (higher SKU)	Yes	Yes

Note To assess the readiness of client computers for Windows 7, you can use the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator, a centralized and agentless tool that can remotely inventory computers, identify their supported Windows 7 experience, and recommend specific hardware upgrades where appropriate. For more information on this tool, see "Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP ) Toolkit" found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd537566.aspx.