Will my PC work with Windows 7 even if I can't find Windows 7 drivers on the manufacturers website?

Question

I'm looking to Upgrade my PC to Windows 7, but before I make the commitment, I would like to know that all my drivers work properly first.

The model is an Acer Veriton 3900Pro. I have run the Upgrade Advisor and I'm told that everything accept Intel(R) Active Management Technology - SOL is compatible in the Devices category.

I am relucant to install Windows 7 because I can't find any source of drivers for it on the official Acer website. While looking through drivers for my model (stupid AJAX) there are none for Windows 7.

Can my computer be used with Windows 7?

Edit: Because I can't install anything (no software to install), will it work out of the box?

Answer 1

The Acer Support site declares the Acer Veriton 3900Pro as compatible with Vista, but not with Windows 7.

This doesn't mean that Windows 7 will not work on this model, but only that perhaps the most advanced display options (such as Aero) may not be fully available.

In case of a problem, where Windows 7 fails to install the best driver for a device, you may always install the Vista drivers, since they are totally compatible with Windows 7.

In conclusion: This should work, but there is always that gray area caused by the fact that Acer doesn't support Windows 7 for this model. I would suggest to get in touch with their Support to ask why. Windows 7 will function, but best be prepared for some annoyances.

I would suggest taking a disk-image of the system drive before installing Windows 7, so to have an easy escape route back to Vista.

Answer 2

The functionality of Intel Active Management Technology is detailed on this page.

Assuming you're using this computer at home, then you probably have no need for out-of-band system access, remote trouble-shooting and recovery, hardware-based agent presence checking, proactive alerting or remote hardware and software asset tracking - which is what AMT is for.

As such, I don't believe you'll have any problem running Windows 7 without it.

Answer 3

You almost certainly don't use Intel AMT so the answer should be yes.

However, I would ensure I had the original XP install or recovery media and keys and an adequate backup of my data so that I could recover back to the original XP system if Windows 7 proved problematic or unacceptably slow. There are plenty of tools for backing up an XP system including those that make disk-images.

I have Windows XP on some PCs and Windows 7 on others. My policy with MS operating systems is to buy new hardware rather than making major OS upgrades on older hardware. Also, for most usage, I don't see any major benefit in upgrading to Windows 7 from XP - but presumably you have identified some specific benefits that justify the upgrade for you.

Answer 4

It's a bit of a long shot, but you might just try installing the Vista or XP drivers for your hardware on your Windows 7 installation. You'll probably have the most luck with this if your CPU and motherboard are Intel-everything; not sure about Acer in that regard.

I remember having to set the "Compatibility Mode" tab in the Properties right-click menu to XP and Vista on two separate occasions before clicking on the setup.exe launcher.

It got my sound, chipset, and Intel GMA graphics working with a new Windows 7 install on this old Dell Dimension 3000.

Answer 5

Not necessarily. You may have to do some hunting to find drivers that work with Win7. I know I had to hunt for a while to find drivers for all of my HP zd8000's components. You're best bet is to make a list of the specific hardware your Acer has, then search around and download any Win7 drivers that are available for those components and burn them all to a CD to have on hand in case you have any problems during install.

While you're searching you can also often find forum posts where others have already tried installing 7 on your particular model and you can learn from any problems they had trying to do so. This was also a huge help to me, as Win7 was known to misidentify the video card in my model of HP and install the wrong video driver.

Answer 6

I have installed Windows 7 on a number of machines at home that were older and don't have Windows 7 listed as an available OS on their respective support sites including an Asus EeePC 701SD (upgraded to 16GB SSD and 1GB Ram) and a Sony Vaio VGN-C140G.

My first suggestion is to make sure that you're using the most recent BIOS available for your computer and that you have at least 2GB of RAM on your machine.

Then, if you have space, see how well Windows 7 runs on your machine by using the install to VHD option using the following as a guide:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/knom/archive/2009/04/07/windows-7-vhd-boot-setup-guideline.aspx

Alternatively, if you have a spare hard drive available, you can pull out your existing hard drive, replace it with a fresh hard drive and install it.

Once you've installed Windows 7, make sure you have the most recent drivers available for the other components in your system by using Windows Update or some of the free driver checking programs available on the net.

I've been very happy with the performance of Windows 7 over Windows XP or Windows Vista in all of my machines with at least 1-2GB of memory.

Hope this helps! Jeff