# What version for upgrade?



## JamsHundred (Jun 25, 2012)

I have Windows Vista on my laptop. I am thinking of upgrading it to Win 7.
I went shopping on the internet and there seem to be a number of versions of Win7, one of which is a Vista upgrade.

If I decide to upgrade. . . is it something a computer novice can do on their own, and which version do I buy?

Thanks,
Judy


----------



## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

For one thing you are going to have to put down what your Laptop with VISTA has in it. How fast how much ram memory speed of the chip things like that because this is what it is going to take to run Windows 7

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/help/upgrading-from-windows-vista-to-windows-7#T1=tab01

Windows 7 system requirements
If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

*1 gigabyte (GB) RAM *(32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
 And THAT is a Big when trying to Upgrade to such a newer OS such as 7
Very BIG 
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Additional requirements to use certain features:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

JamsHundred said:


> I have Windows Vista on my laptop. I am thinking of upgrading it to Win 7.
> I went shopping on the internet and there seem to be a number of versions of Win7, one of which is a Vista upgrade.
> 
> If I decide to upgrade. . . is it something a computer novice can do on their own, and which version do I buy?
> ...


Yes, upgrade from Vista to 7 is pretty automatic. The hardware compatibility standards are the same for the most part, and Vista drivers for hardware are usually compatible with Windows 7. You can verify your hardware compatibility by downloading and running the Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser utility, which is available at no charge directly from Microsoft at this link.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20

After running the upgrade adviser you should determine your exact version of Vista. You can check that by right-clicking on your My Computer icon and selecting Properties. Your Vista version will be listed under Windows Edition, but also look under System to see if your Vista version is 32-bit or 64-bit. You'll want to match 32 or 64 bit when you select your upgrade product.

As you suspected there are specific Windows 7 versions that you can and can't upgrade to, depending on the version of Vista that you're upgrading from. You can learn more about that at this link.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd772579%28v=ws.10%29.aspx

But this table summarizes the specific information that you'll need to select an appropriate upgrade version.










So, for example, if you have Vista Home Premium then you can upgrade to either Windows 7 Home Premium or Ultimate, but if you have Vista Ultimate you can only upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate.


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Duplicate post.


----------



## jross (Sep 3, 2006)

One caveate; If you are running any old programs such Microsoft Train Simulator ( Win 95 era), keep them out of the x86 programs folder or they will not run correctly. I put my Train Sim program into C:/MSTS1 and it runs well,considering how crappy M-soft built it.


----------

