70-698 - Determine Hardware Compatibility for Windows 10

hello and welcome to this tech tip from will in the last video I looked at the minimum hardware requirements that have to be met to install Windows 10 once you're satisfied your computer meets these requirements the next step is to verify that the hardware you intend to use with Windows 10 is in fact compatible with Windows 10 this includes all of the internal computer hardware as well as peripherals like scanners printers and webcams for example in this video I'll show you how to check your hardware so you can make sure it is compatible with Windows 10 so let's get started so why is hardware compatibility so important and why can't you just use any hardware with Windows 10 to understand why consider the anatomy of a computer under the hood a computer is made up of multiple Hardware devices including a motherboard a processor a hard disk network cards graphic cards and so on and so forth on top of that you might also attach some external hardware to the computer such as a printer or a scanner when you break a computer down this way you can start to see that a computer is in fact made up of several hardware devices when Windows 10 is installed onto a computer the Windows 10 operating system has to be able to communicate with the hardware that it's been installed on - this is accomplished using what are called drivers so what exactly is a driver drivers are small pieces of software that are written for specific hardware devices in other words drivers are essentially the software that tells a particular hardware device how to communicate with the operating system on a windows-based system every piece of hardware has to have a driver associated with it which tells it how to work understand without drivers a computer is nothing more than a bunch of hardware devices that cannot talk to one another when choosing which hardware you plan to use with Windows 10 it's recommended that you use hardware that as a driver which has been specifically written for Windows 10 if however you're using older hardware you could find that up-to-date Windows 10 drivers don't yet exist for that hardware in cases like this using a driver that was created for an earlier version of Windows such as Windows 8.1 for example might work understand though this is not guaranteed in fact using drivers that are not written specifically for Windows 10 could cause system instabilities when you purchase hardware that is compatible with Windows 10 you're paying not just for the hardware device but also for the windows 10 driver that has been developed for that hardware device it's also worth noting that drivers are architecture specific that is there a drivers created for 32-bit hardware and there are drivers created for 64-bit hardware these drivers are not interchangeable in other words 32-bit drivers cannot be installed onto a 64-bit system and 64-bit drivers cannot be installed onto a 32-bit system hopefully now you can start to see the importance of using Hardware that is compatible with Windows 10 now that you understand why hardware compatibility is so important how exactly do we go about checking our hardware well there are a couple of ways if you have just one or two computers or hardware devices to check the easiest way might be to check the manufacturers website any reputable hardware vendor will have a download section on their website from here the administrator can search for their hardware device and download the latest up-to-date Windows 10 drivers for that hardware device this is especially useful if you have a peripheral device like a printer scanner digital camera or webcam for example but you can also search for drivers for internal hardware devices too like a network adapter graphics card or sound card for instance if you have just a handful of computers visiting the website is pretty straightforward however if you have a large environment with hundreds or even thousands of computers searching for up-to-date drivers for each of these devices manually is not very practical Microsoft has thought about this and has developed a free tool called the Microsoft assessment and planning toolkit or simply the map the Microsoft assessment and planning toolkit works by scanning your entire network essentially the toolkit will locate all of the computers on your network and will check whether or not the hardware installed in those computers is compatible with Windows 10 you can download the Microsoft assessment and planning toolkit completely free of charge from the Microsoft website using the following link see the description of this video where you can copy the link for your own documentation the great thing about the Microsoft assessment and planning toolkit is that it requires no agents to be installed on any of the client computers on your network all you have to do is download the tool install it on the administrators workstation run it and the toolkit will do the rest to demonstrate how the Microsoft assessment and planning toolkit works I've created a small lab environment made up three computers one of these computers is my Windows Server 2012 r2 domain controller this server is running Active Directory DNS and DHCP services for my network the other two computers are client computers one of these computers is running Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 and the other Windows 8.1 using the Microsoft assessment and planning toolkit I'll perform a scan of my lab network and we'll find out which of these computers are ready for Windows 10 so now I will change over to my Windows 7 computer to show you how this is done as you can see I've already downloaded the Microsoft assessment and planning toolkit and have placed it onto the desktop of this computer the first step is to actually install the so I'll double-click on the setup program and we'll get started the install is a very simple one simply click Next accept the licensing agreement choose your preferred install location either opt in or opt out of the customer experience improvement program and click install the install takes about a minute or two so I'll fast forward to the end so we don't have to wait the Microsoft assessment and planning toolkit is now installed on this occasion I'm being asked to reboot the computer to finish the installation so I'll reboot the computer now and we'll return shortly the computer has now finished rebooting to use the toolkit simply click the start button and launch it from the Start menu when the toolkit launches for the first time you're required to create a new inventory database when the toolkit assesses the computers on your network the toolkit collects what is called inventory data the data is stored in a database so I'll create an inventory database called Windows 10 and then click the ok button once the database has been created we'll then use the toolkit to perform an inventory of the computers on this network to perform an infantry in the top left corner selects the desktop tab in the main pane notice that there are a few inventory scenarios that we can run the first being Windows 10 readiness to start the inventory click the link collect inventory data this will open the inventory and assessment wizard from here you can customize how the inventory is carried out on the inventory scenarios page you can choose which types of computer you want to inventory as you can see the list of possibilities here is quite large the toolkit is capable of taking an inventory of computers that are currently running a variety of Microsoft server systems and can even infantry third systems such as Linux and VMware since I have no third-party systems in my lab environment I would choose to inventory only the windows computers on this network next is the discovery methods page from here you can decide how the toolkit goes about finding computers on your network as I mentioned earlier the Microsoft assessment planning toolkit requires no agents to be installed on any computer so choosing how the toolkit goes about discovering these computers is quite important as you can see there are a few ways the administrator can go about discovering computers if the computers on your network are joined to a domain you can simply use Active Directory domain services to discover your computers but you can also discover computers by searching for Windows networking protocols by scanning a particular IP address range or even by entering the names of the computers manually since the computers in my lab are all domains joined our use Active Directory to discover my computers since I'm using Active Directory to perform my search I'm required to enter my Active Directory credentials so I'll enter my domain name as tech tips from Wilco UK although administrative privileges are not required to run the toolkit in this case I will use my domain administrator account to run the inventory and I will enter my administrator username and password the next page of the wizard is the Active Directory options page from here I'm able to choose where in the Active Directory database the toolkit will conduct its search for computers by default the toolkit was searched the entire Active Directory database including all domains containers and organizational units however if you have a very large Active Directory infrastructure you may wish to narrow your search and include only the organizational units that contain your computer accounts if you're unsure simply leave this on the default and the toolkit will search the whole of Act directory next is the computer credentials page on this page I'm required to enter credentials that can be used to access the computers being Infant read to add credentials simply click the create button and enter the username and password for the account you want to use freeze of administration I will once again use my domain administrator account since this account has access to all computers on my network when your credentials are added click the Save button of course you could add multiple credentials if you wanted this is especially useful when you have a computer on your network that only particular credentials can access on the next page you can specify the order in which the credentials from the previous page are used using the move up and move down buttons on the right you're able to specify the order in which credentials will be attempted to access the computers that is if the first credentials do not work for a particular computer the next credentials listed will be tried instead since I've only specified one set of credentials I will skip this page and move on the final page of the wizard sums up the choices we've made so far here simply review the selections you've made and when you're happy click the finish button the toolkit will begin the process of inventing the computers on your network and will collect data from those computers depending on the size of your network and the number of computers you have this could take quite some time however since I'm running a small network with just a few devices this should only take a moment or two once all of the machines have been inventoried the assessment will be marked as completed if you'd like to view more details about the assessment expands the details heading from here I can see that the toolkit managed to discover three computers on my network and that all three of these computers were discovered using Active Directory as per my selections I will now close out of the inventory screen and we'll return to the toolkit from here I can view a summary of the inventory as you can see the toolkit found two computers on my network that are ready for Windows 10 and that no computers were found that cannot run Windows 10 if you'd like to see a more detailed report in the top right corner click the generate Windows 10 readiness report this will gather all of the inventory data which was collected from these computers and will place it into an Excel spreadsheet if I open this spreadsheet up you can see the windows 10 assessment summary for all client computers immediately I can see that the two client computers that were discovered by the toolkit both meets the minimum system requirements for Windows 10 if I select the assessment values tab you can see in more detail the criteria used by the toolkit during the assessment including the CPU memory and hard disk requirements and on the device details tab you can see the individual hardware devices that were assessed from each device and on the after upgrades tab whether or not these computers are in need of hardware upgrades after studying this Excel spreadsheet I can safely say that all computers inventoried on my network meets the necessary requirements for running Windows 10 hopefully now you can start to see how the Microsoft assessment and planning tool kit works and how the toolkit can help verify whether or not the hardware installed on your computers is compatible with Windows 10 in the large environment when planning a migration or an upgrade to Windows 10 the Microsoft assessment and planning toolkit is a very useful tool for any administrator well that's it for determining hardware compatibility for Windows 10 in the next video I will look at how you can verify that the applications you plan to use with Windows 10 are actually compatible with Windows 10 this will involve looking at another tool the Microsoft application compatibility toolkit I hope you've enjoyed this video from tech tips from will for more Windows 10 videos you can check out our you Tube channel and be sure to subscribe to our channel to be notified of new upcoming videos thanks for watching and we'll see you on the next tech tip

Channel: techtipsfromwill

Views: 8,012

Keywords: 70-698, microsoft, Windows 10, Hardware, Compatibility, Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit

Id: PBN5psRybdY

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2016