Microsoft Confirms Windows 10 Will Work on Vista PCs

jimbo45 · 15 Jan 2015

Hi there.

Any reason why W10 WOULDN'T work on these machines -- any machine running W7 will run W10 and a load of XP machines probably will too. Newer CPU's of course can take advantage of new instructions in the processor while the OS will call routines to handle the cases where the latest cpu instructions don't exist in the older processors.

This is often done as a matter of course in floating point calculations where a lot of CPU's don't have native floating point instructions. OK it takes a bit longer but the computer is still useable. Sometimes you could add what was known as a Co-processor -- this happened on early 8086 processors for example where you could add in an extra 8087 co-processor to improve the floating point maths.

Cheers
jimbo

alphanumeric · 15 Jan 2015

There are few people that posted that they couldn't upgrade from 8.0 to 8.1 because of hardware, CPU I think? I probably should have read the article before I posted this. But hey, where's the fun in that?

Meh, that doesn't really say much, pretty vague.

jimbo45 · 15 Jan 2015

Hi there

I think the hardware requirement for W10 is actually LESS than W8/W8.1. Remember in W10 you can essentially disable the whole wretched Metro stuff as W10 is designed initially for DESKTOP users whom Ms hope to wean away from W7. The Consumer preview to come might be somewhat more machine intensive if the graphics are tested more (dynamic metro apps with video) but desktops should run just fine on it.

Cheers
jimbo

LMiller7 · 15 Jan 2015

Windows 8 and 10 have some CPU requirements above that for Windows 7. The CPU must support PAE, NX and SSE2. Prior to Windows 8 these were recommendations but not required. There are some older systems running XP and even Vista that do not meet these requirements.

Edit: Windows 8.1 added the requirement for the CMPXCHG16b instruction for a 64 bit OS. For technical reasons this instruction could not be emulated without serious degradation of performance.

alphanumeric · 15 Jan 2015

Time will tell.

alphanumeric · 15 Jan 2015

LMiller7 said:

Windows 8 and 10 have some CPU requirements above that for Windows 7. The CPU must support PAE, NX and SSE2. Prior to Windows 8 these were recommendations but not required. There are some older systems running XP and even Vista that do not meet these requirements.

That's where I was going with my other post. If you think about it though, most of those users likely won't upgrade the OS on those PC's ever. Some may if 10 is offered free, but most won't. They'll just keep using it as is until it won't boot up anymore. If they wouldn't upgrade from XP or Vista to Windows 7, I don't see them upgrading to Windows 10. I'm sure there will be some tech enthusiasts here that will try 10 on some old hardware, but Joe average won't. IMHO that is.

ThrashZone · 15 Jan 2015

Yep if Microsoft really wants holdouts there would be allot of refunds if old hardware was not compatible,
Allot of old machines are still up and kicking because they are good quality,
Some x-p's might need some tweaking but most of that might only be ram
Vista had about the same ram requirements as 7 so it wouldn't make any sense to exclude them from an upgrade,

Besides I doubt many would go for many of the live titles anyway and those are the most resource heavy items in 8 or 10.

alphanumeric · 15 Jan 2015

ThrashZone said:

Yep if Microsoft really wants holdouts there would be allot of refunds if old hardware was not compatible,
Allot of old machines are still up and kicking because they are good quality,
Some x-p's might need some tweaking but most of that might only be ram
Vista had about the same ram requirements as 7 so it wouldn't make any sense to exclude them from an upgrade,

Besides I doubt many would go for many of the live titles anyway and those are the most resource heavy items in 8 or 10.

If 10 does show up as an online download for those people, I would think there would be an upgrade advisor type of check to confirm that PC supports it before you download or pay for it. Then it becomes buyer beware.

ThrashZone · 15 Jan 2015

Yep I believe that is what the downloadable 10 tool kit is about and then 10 update will be delivered through the windows update system as a trial,
I have my 8.1 ready to download the tool kit as soon as it's available and update to 10 that way so I might be ready for any special upgrade os deals that may strike

The iso is easy enough to download for a clean install if no deal hits :)