Can This Computer Be Upgraded To Windows 7 64 Ultimate?

Hi,

Welcome to the Community.

Could you please provide the following details:

1. How much is the memory is installed on the system?
2. What is size of the hard drive?

You can also refer to the link mentioned below for minimum requirement for Windows 7:

http://bit.ly/hTrEg

Thanks & Regards
Manshu S
#iworkfordell

Thanks for the reply!

Memory is 2GHz

Hard drive is 500 GHz

I think I mentioned it has XP professional installed now but I'm not sure I did or if it makes a difference.

I guess the real question I should be asking is the cpu and Motherboard capable of 64 bit.

It depends on your processor ... which processor do you have (you can find out in Device Manager or download CPU-z)?  All processors in a 320 "should" be 64-bit, HOWEVER, that alone does not mean you can install and successfully run Windows 7.  The 330 is very similar (and one version newer) and does run Windows 7 wonderfully, although Dell provided no drivers for it ... the Vista drivers work fine.  You should probably start by running the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to get an idea if your hardware and software will work with W7:

www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx

This is what it is per CPU z

CPU Intel core2

Duo cpu E4600 @ 2.4 GHz

Instruction set 64 bit x86 extention (AMD64, EM64T)

This is the mother board

Mother Board Dell Optiplex 320

bus type-Intel GTL+

bus width 64-bit

The CPU http://ark.intel.com/products/32242/Intel-Core2-Duo-Processor-E4600-2M-Cache-2_40-GHz-800-MHz-FSB has a 64 bit instruction set and thus is 64 bit compatible,

If planning to upgrade to Windwos 7 Ultimate 64 bit you should install 4 GB of RAM otherwise the 32 bit will run better on 2 GB of RAM (you said you had a 2 GHz RAM and 500 GHz hard drive, I think you meant GB) : http://www.crucial.com/upgrade/Dell-memory/OptiPlex/OptiPlex+320-upgrades.html

What Video Card do you have?

See my wiki A Clean Install of Windows 7 for best results.

Personally I would advise updating the BIOS to the latest verions (See Step 17) before attempting to install Windows 7.

Thanks for the reply!  Yes I erred.  It should be GB.

The video card is a ATI Radeon HD 3600

I have never updated a BIOS as I heard it can be bad if done wrong.  I am willing to learn though.

I already know I have two music programs that only work with XP.  But I was told I could use "capability mode" with Windows 7 and it would run XP programs.

The BIOS update can go wrong and brick the system but it is a very rare occasion. I have updated the BIOS on at least 50 systems and only had the problem once. The one system I had the problem on was a totally unstable system that I bought on eBay.

When updating that you save the BIOS update on the desktop, remove any USB devices or CD/DVDs and run the update, it should work fine.

If you install Windows 7 Professional you can install Windows XP Mode, for this I recommend upgrading the RAM. Alternatively if you have a spare XP license you can use VirtualBox and install XP in that. VirtualBox is better than XP mode in my opinion. 

The latest BIOS is here:

BIOS 1.1.12 http://ftp.dell.com/bios/O3201112.EXE 

I recommend installing it but you can try without it if you don't feel comfortable updating te BIOS.

Once Windows 7 is installed likely everything will work. However you can try the Windows 7 64 bit drivers taken from Optiplex 760 and get the Video driver should be obtained direct from ATI:

System Utilities

Dell System Software: http://ftp.dell.com/utility/DELL_SYSTEM-SOFTWARE_A01_R260746.exe

Audio

Analogue Devices ADI 198x: http://ftp.dell.com/audio/R228257.exe

Communications

D850 Driver: http://ftp.dell.com/comm/CONEXANT_D850-56K-V-9X-PCI-D_A01_R233198.exe

D850 Application: http://ftp.dell.com/comm/CONEXANT_MULTI-DEVICE_A10_R237348.exe

D850 Diagnostics: http://ftp.dell.com/comm/CONEXANT_MULTI-DEVICE_A06_R237617.exe

D850 Utility: http://ftp.dell.com/comm/R139937.exe

Video

ATI Video http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx