Windows 10: Is my Laptop's hardware supported by Windows 10?

Hi,
I have a Acer Aspire 4736z laptop. The only upgrade I ever made to the hardware was increasing the RAM from 1 to 2 GB DDR3. I installed Windows 7 on it many many years ago and never looked back. I didn't even use Windows 8(.1) until a couple of weeks ago. I'm interested in getting Windows 10 but there are a couple of things holding me back:
1-Obviously, hardware support, Acer's official support website does not have Windows 10 (and Windows 8) drivers for my notebook, but driverscape claims to have them. But more importantly, I'm worried about the required specifications (not talking about minimum spec given by microsoft). I have a Intel Pentium Dual-Core T4200 2 GHz CPU, but I don't know if it supports PAE, NX and SSED2. I'm also worried that the 2 GB DDR3 RAM will not be enough and the Windows will be slow. I have a 250 GB hard drive.
So, should I install Windows 10 or not?
Thanks.

:)

 

Hardware not supported by Windows 10 ... or is it?

I have an HP Compaq 6730b laptop running Win 7 32 bit Pro and it has the Win 10 icon on it. However when I go into the Win 10 app it tells me there is no supported networking hardware on the machine - the machine actually has both wifi and Ethernet capability
and both work quite happily under Win 7.

Getting a bit frustrated by this refusal to download and install the Win 10 upgrade I took a copy of the Win 10 insider program and installed this on a clean SSD from scratch. Surprise, surprise this installs perfectly and what is more both the wifi and
Ethernet connections work perfectly and download tons of data with no error messages or problems.

The Win 10 app says it last did a test on Aug 10th which is 10 days ago and according to the web it will do a new test every month or so - quite a long while to wait and there seems no way to force a retest.

Is Win 10 going to continue to install the upgrade from Win 7, or at some point in the future is it just possible it will concede that my hardware is after all supported and will work fine? Or is there something else going on? Any ideas anyone?

 

Hardware not supported by Windows 10 ... or is it?

I've had a response from the system effectively asking me to 'close' this as fixed but I don't really see why I should do this until I can find out how to report this issue to Microsoft - I would have thought they would be interested in understanding bugs
in their systems which prevent people using them. Does anyone know how to formally report this issue to Microsoft?

 

What you could do is make a backup image of your system and then give 10 a shot.. if it fails for whatever reason or you just don't like it you can restore your system back to 8.1 at any time.

And welcome to the forums.
Jeff

 

I agree with BunnyJ about making a backup image before you start.

You could also try the Windows 8.1 Upgrade Assistant which would check out your CPU - my understanding is that the CPU requirements didn't change from 8.1 to 10.
Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant - Download and Run
Edit: I didn't notice you were running Windows 8.1 already.

2GB is enough to run Windows 10 itself comfortably, although obviously you wouldn't want to run software that was heavy on memory usage, but that's no different to the way you have it now with Windows 7.

Once Windows 10 has installed and finished rebuilding its indexes etc., I think the speed would be comparable to what you have now with Windows 7 - it probably won't be much faster, but shouldn't be much slower either.

 

*Ditto*Thumbs

 

I have a much ancient PC, it runs fine on win 10, make sure you download 64 bit MS media and if possible upgrade HD to SSD.

 

I think you need to download the media with whatever number of bits is running now, to do the initial upgrade. So if the laptop is currently running 32 bit Windows 8.1, then upgrade to 32-bit Windows 10, and likewise if currently running 64-bit.

It may be possible to clean-install later (check the initial upgrade has Activated Windows 10 before you do anything) and change the number of bits that way.

Also, I struggled to find 64-bit drivers for my older Acer so I was forced to stick with 32-bit. But 32-bit Windows 10 is fine, especially with only 2GB of RAM.

 

You are absolutely right, with 32 bit windows 7, the media has to be 32 bit to upgrade to wins 10. The clean install with windows 10 can be 64 bit, with the 64 bit media. 2gb ram should handle 64 bit.