Can Windows 7 be installed in a old computer now running Windows 98?

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Clyde1

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Jan 21, 2015
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Does the hardware in a computer that came with Windows 98 work with Vista or windows 7? Can it be upgraded to either software?
 
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USAFRet
Unless that Win98 system has had major upgrades, no, it will not work.
And even if it does work, it will be depressingly slow.

Putting money into it to make it work will cost more, and still be far slower, than any $250 box from Walmart.
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Mr5oh

Mr5oh

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Jul 28, 2004
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It depends very much on the hardware. You are going to have to see if drivers are available for that specific hardware in newer versions of Windows. My guess is no, you are out of luck with Windows. Perhaps this PC would be a good candidate for Linux?
 
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ulysses35

ulysses35

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Jul 2, 2008
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You would need to supply more information about the items you wish to run under Windows 7 - most likely there will be no driver support, however it is possible to run some XP drivers - albeit with a performance hit and stability hit
 
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FALC0N

FALC0N

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Apr 5, 2010
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I'm a little surprised at some of these answers. There is no way a windows 98 machine runs 7. Forget drivers. The hardware from that era wasn't fast enough and didn't have enough RAM. People, those were pentium II's with 256mb of ram. It isn't happening unless somebody stuck windows 98 on a newer machine years after it was obsolete.
 
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Jonas Magnusson

Jonas Magnusson

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I haven't used a real windows 98 in over 10 years, so i forgot how little RAM capacity they had. You can still run a half decent Linux distro though. Maybe Windows XP for that matter, who cares about the support anyway. Theoretically that would mean that windows xp is even more safer now since it doesn't need to send data to Microsoft. You can still have anti-virus programs installed but you have no concern when using linux about that matter.
 
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Jonas Magnusson

Jonas Magnusson

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There's 2 ways to make it run win7/vista.
1. upgrade the RAM to 2GB if possible
2. Use Readyboost™ on a SDcard or USB, If Vista or newer is installed.
---
Option 2 is very, very slow. But better than nothing.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Unless that Win98 system has had major upgrades, no, it will not work.
And even if it does work, it will be depressingly slow.

Putting money into it to make it work will cost more, and still be far slower, than any $250 box from Walmart.
 
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