I hope this is the correct sub-forum for this. There ia actually no sticky in this subforum, that would explain what to put here and what not.

I've found this interesting table on the internet, and I think it is really relevant for BA and its users. It shows the hardware-requirements for the Windows-versions up to Windows 7.
I think it is especially important, since there seems to be very little hardware-information in the BA-wiki.

This table only contains the requirements of official Windows-versions. If you know any Windows-betas with different requirements, or Windows-versions that are missing here, feel free to post these infos, to make the list more complete. Also service-packs are not yet taken into account. So feel free to contribute your knowledge!




****Official system-requirements:




Windows 1.0

8086/8088 processor
256K of RAM (512k recommended)
CGA/EGA/Hercules graphics card (VGA didn't exist at the time)
Two double-sided floppy drives or a hard drive
MS-DOS 2.0 (purchased separately)



 
Windows 2.0

8086/8088 processor
512K of RAM
CGA/EGA/VGA/Hercules graphics card (VGA is officially supported)
Two double-sided floppy drives or a hard drive
MS-DOS 3.0 (purchased separately)



 
Windows 2.1

8086/8088 processor (the "Windows/386" version required a 386)
512K of RAM
CGA/EGA/VGA/Hercules graphics card
One floppy drives AND a Hard drive (Hard drive is required)
MS-DOS 3.0 (purchased seperately)



 
Windows 3.0

8086/8088 processor (a 286 for standard mode and a 386 for enhanced mode)
640K of RAM (and 256K of Extended Memory for standard and enhanced mode)
CGA/EGA/VGA/Hercules graphics card
5.25-inch or 3.5-inch floppy drive
Hard drive with 6 MB of free space
MS-DOS 3.1 (purchased seperately)



 
Windows 3.1 / Windows 3.11

286 processor (a 386 is required for Windows for Workgroups 3.11)
1 MB of RAM (2 MB recommended)
EGA/VGA/Hercules graphics card (CGA no longer supported)
5.25-inch or 3.5-inch floppy drive (CD version still needs boot floppy)
Hard drive with 10 MB of free space
MS-DOS 3.1 (purchased seperately)




Windows NT 3.1 / Windows NT 3.5 / Windows NT 3.51

386 processor @ 25 MHz
12 MB of RAM (16 MB for server editions)
VGA graphics card
CD-ROM drive or floppy drive
90 MB of free space



 
Windows 95

386DX processor (486 recommended)
4 MB of RAM (8 MB recommended)
VGA graphics card
CD-ROM or floppy drive
50 MB free space



 
Windows NT 4

486 processor @ 25 MHz
12 MB of RAM (16 MB for server editions)
VGA graphics card
CD-ROM drive or floppy drive
110 MB free space



 
Windows 98

486DX2 @ 66 MHz (Pentium recommended)
16 MB of RAM (24 MB recommended)
VGA graphics card
CD-ROM drive
200 MB free space




Windows 2000

Pentium @ 133 MHz (Pentium II @ 300 MHz recommended)
32 MB of RAM (128 MB for servers edition)
VGA graphics card
CD-ROM drive
650 MB free space



 
Windows ME

Pentium @ 150 MHz (Pentium II @ 300 MHz recommended)
32 MB of RAM (64 MB recommended)
VGA graphics card
CD-ROM drive
320 MB free space



 
Windows XP

Pentium @ 233 MHz (Pentium II @ 300 MHz recommended)
64 MB of RAM (128 MB recommended)
SVGA graphics card
CD-ROM drive
1.5 GB free space




Windows Vista Starter

800MHz processor (1GHz or higher processor recommended)
A minimum of 384 MB and a maximum of 1 GB of RAM (512 MB recommended)
15 GB of hard disk space (250 GB maximum)
Super VGA 800 x 600 resolution video adapter



 
Windows Vista

Pentium III @ 800 MHz (Pentium III @ 1 GHz recommended)
512 MB of RAM (1 GB of RAM recommended)
DirectX 9 graphics card with WDDM driver required for Aero Glass
CD-ROM drive (DVD drive required for retail versions)
15 GB free space




Windows 7

Pentium III @ 1 GHz
1 GB of RAM (2 GB for 64-bit edition)
DirectX 9 graphics card with WDDM driver required for Aero Glass
DVD drive or USB bootable stick
16 GB free space (20 GB 64-bit)




Windows 8

1GHz Processor with PEA, NX and SSE2
1 GB of RAM (2 GB for 64-bit edition)
DirectX 9 graphics card with WDDM driver
DVD drive or USB bootable stick
16 GB free space (20 GB 64-bit)




****Inofficial minimum-requirements, according to tests made by users (unmodified setup):




Windows 2000

Pentium @ 90 MHz




Windows 7

686-based CPU @ 700 MHz
512 MB of RAM




****Inofficial minimum-requirements, according to tests made by users (modified setup):




Windows Vista and
Windows 7 can be installed on 256 MB of RAM by editing winsetup.dll:

viewtopic.php?p=334157#p334157

Thanks for this. Where'd you find the information?

Great, I was looking the some time ago, with no results. Please indicate the source, thank you very much

Some of them, though, are much closer to system recommendations than system requirements. Listings such as those for Windows Vista and Windows 7, especially, are an example of this.

Windows 7, for example, doesn't really "require" a processor at exactly 1 Ghz, though it does require a processor that is 686-based. Windows 7 has run quite well on 700 Mhz, 750 Mhz, 800 Mhz, 850 Mhz, 900 Mhz, 933 Mhz, and 950 Mhz processors, just that Microsoft recommends at least 1 Ghz, and really, although Windows Vista and Windows 7 have actually run quite well on practically any system made within the last decade, they are still obviously best on modern systems by far, though as most people already know, they will indeed run well even on many older systems.

Also, there were options in Windows 98 setup to tone done the system requirements a bit, which have been posted on WinHistory for a long time now (and this is coming from someone who has been around the Internet a great deal longer than many of our members here), and at WinHistory itself, they even found out that Windows 98 will actually run on a 386 system, but that the unmodified Setup prevents this since Microsoft was not officially marketing Windows 98 towards 386 users.

Finally, contrary to popular belief, Windows 95 ran quite fine on a 386SX; infact, it ran quite fine on all 386 processors with exception to the "B-step" chips which were defective and thus could not run actual "386 class" (a.k.a. "x86 32-bit") software, an exceptionally major defect which in my opinion completely defeats the purpose of even having a 386 processor anyway, since that was obviously the reason why people purchased them in the first place, as opposed to the mere performance improvements that the 386 chips also provided on the side.

What would be more accurate from a technological standpoint, really, would be to have the actual technical requirements separated from both, the requirements for installation from the unmodified Windows Setup, and the official "system requirements" and secondary "recommendations" for all versions of Windows, with all three listed for reference and comparison.

@gamelover101
@abandonware

The info was taken from here:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_ ... ft_Windows




@WinPC

I agree with you, I also hope that other users will contribute more precise information. I personally cannot test anything beyond Windows 95 because my machine is too old. Also I cannot test any betas, because I don't have access to the BA-ftp-servers yet (maybe I never will, because there might be no appropriate ftp-clients for my old computer, but I am not sure yet).
Also I think that there is little point in installing Windows 98 on a 386, but it is really an interesting fact, that it works. Also interesting for people (like me), who use PC-emulators.
If you really want it super-precise, then one would have to add two more entrys to the three recommended by you:
1. Requirements with modified setup and or patches/hacks
2. "Maximum Requirements". I once read that some Windows-versions actually don't work, if they are installed on a too fast system. However this might be just rumours.

Also, I can attest to the fact that unmodified Windows 2000 installs/runs BEAUTIFULLY on a Pentium 90MHz (and maybe even slower!)

Thanks, for your contribution, nathaniel87, but you should also add the amount of ram your 90-Mhz-machine has, because AFAIK Windows is very mem-hungry and its speed usually depends a lot on the amount of ram available, so maybe the machine you have used for testing has loooads of ram. If not, please correct me.
Anyway, it's amazing to hear that Windows 2000 will run at reasonable speeds on (comparatively) slow machines.

It has 128MB of those old EDO SIMMs, though I'm sure you could do it on less memory (I'm sure 32MB would be fine). I wasn't testing for minimum hardware requirements; I was just trying to get my old computer up and running.

So it seems that the increased amount of ram (four times more than minimum-requirements) actually compensates the decreased cpu-clock (90 Mhz is not that far away from 133 Mhz). I wonder if this could be true for other Windows-versions as well.
In fact harddisk-speed may also play an important role, because AFAIK Windows does a lot of vitual-memory-stuff. So e. g. a fast SCSI-harddisk might also speed up Windows significantly.

You might want to consider adding Windows 8 to your list for a more complete image

Windows 8

1GHz Processor with PEA, NX and SSE2
1 GB of RAM (2 GB for 64-bit edition)
DirectX 9 graphics card with WDDM driver
DVD drive or USB bootable stick
16 GB free space (20 GB 64-bit)

And thumbs up, it's a great list!

@Creadskel


Thanks, I've added it.
More infos, especially concerning requirements of Betas are still welcome.

@Yuyu

Excuse me, I've made a spelling mistake.
It's PAE instead of PEA.

Something I saw after Vista is that the requirements haven't really changed

IIRC Windows Vista Starter required 384mb of RAM, and, I'm not sure, other editions of Vista can be installed with 384mb too.

Okay, I have added users personal test-results to the list (thanks to: WinPC, nathaniel87, and EPPM). If you managed to install the named versions on even lower hardware, let me know, so I can correct the values.

So far I have only taken unmodified setups into account. If you want to contribute infos about requirements of modified setups, please give a detailed step-by-step-explanation of how to perform that particular setup, or post a link to such an explanation.

Windows 7:
AMD Sempron 2600+ @ 1.6 GHz
512 MB
Graphics card with full Aero support

It seems that Vista Starter requirements are official: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/news ... terFS.mspx

Also you can install 7 and vista on 256mb of RAM editing winsetup.dll:

Note: This is for 7 x86, and I think it works for Vista x86. x64 versions not tested.

1.- Open Winsetup.dll in the Sources folder with a hex editor.
2.- Look for the 77 07 3D 78 01 string
3.- Replace it with E9 04 00 00 00, save.
4.- Copy the file to the install media if necessary.

Yes, indeed, linuxlove even installed Windows 7 that way on an older system with only 384 MB of RAM, so really, thanks for pointing that out.

Of course, it's going to be nowhere near as fast as with 1 GB or more or even 512 MB of RAM, but it's still worth mentioning by far.