How to Use the Vista Upgrade Advisor

The Vista Upgrade Advisor will help you determine if your Windows XP computer can be updated to run Windows Vista, and which edition best suits your current system hardware configuration. This utility comes as a free software download from the Microsoft site. The utility can also determine if a computer running Vista Basic could be successfully upgraded to a more advanced version of Vista. In this article, we take a look at the software, how it runs, the details it provides, and the decisions that can be made from its conclusion.

With the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor, you can make the educated decision to upgrade or not. It takes less than twenty minutes to determine the Vista edition that is right for you computer. Microsoft has made the process of educating users about Vista’s upgrade problems as transparent as possible.

Installing the Vista Upgrade Advisor

First things first, you need to download the Vista Upgrade Advisor to your XP computer. You can do this by visiting the Microsoft Buy or Upgrade page. Once there, select the link to download the free software. The download should only last a minute or two on most Internet connections. Once it downloads, go through the installation instructions. They are fairly straightforward. We are now ready to gauge whether your computer can be upgraded or not.

Advisor System Requirements

If you experience trouble installing the Advisor software, you may not have system resources to operate the utility. You need the following to successfully run the software:

• XP Service Pack 2
• .NET Framework 1.1 Installed
• MSXML 4.0 (you will be prompted to download this if your system doesn’t meet the requirements)
• 20 MB of hard drive space