Since Windows Vista requires a decent hardware, you need to find out whether your hardware is compatible or not before upgrade. There are several ways to check compatibility of your computer.

As a quick solution you can check Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) website (Unfortunately you need to use Internet Explorer to open this link). This website contains a huge amount of computers and devices that have been tested to work with Windows Vista. The list contains bunch of categories and devices that you can search.

If you are an XP user, you can use Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor to check if your computer’s hardware is compatible with Vista or not. Once you downloaded this tool there will be few more step to run out. You should make sure that all USB devices (printer, scanner, webcam, etc…) are connected to your pc, so advisor can check theirs compatitibility as well. Right after being sure that everything is ok you can install software.

A shortcut will be placed on desktop. Launch the application and click ‘Start Scan’. When the Scanning is completed click on see details to see compatibility test result.

The tool is also going to recommend you particular flavour of Vista that would suit and run on your computer.