‘Good question: I think it deserves a post all of its own. I was looking at a list of recent visitors to my blog when I saw your Yahoo search enquiry. Don’t worry; I can’t personally identify you: I know you visited but I’ve no idea who you are. ‘Thanks all the same for leaving me a title to write about.

The answer is; in some cases yes, in other cases no. A very rough guide to some sort of an answer would be the question: -

How old is your computer? : -  More than 5 years old = Probably not. (1)

                                                          Less than 5 years old  = Maybe. (2)

                                                          Less than 3 years old  = Probably. (3)

(*The above figures signify how old the personal computer in question was in the year of the article’s publication. – 2010.)

That gives us some idea; but it has no more than a 75% chance of being the right answer, and even the 3 answers aren’t definite.

What I can say with a good degree of accuracy is that even if it’s possible to run Win 7 64-bit on a computer older than 5 years; it’s not really worth all of the hassle. Why not? Because at that age, hardware is getting past it, and it’s probably not going to see another 2 years in a good working condition. It might; but the odds are stacked against it doing so. – So if your old XP machine is that old then it’s best to consider buying new with Windows 7 pre-installed, or building a box and installing Win 7 on it.

If it’s less than 5 years old then what you really need to know is: Does it have a 64-bit-capable motherboard? – And does it have a 64-bit capable processor? If the answer is yes to both questions, then you can give installing Win 7 64-bit a try. If no to one or both questions then you’ll need to replace the motherboard, RAM, and processor, before you can install anything 64-bit. – That’s basically almost a total rebuild. Is it worth doing? You decide: It’s your box after all. The cost of doing so? If you’re lucky you can just do it for just under £100UKP using a cheap or secondhand dual-cored processor on a new motherboard; Intel Socket 775 or AMD Socket AM2.

How do you find out whether your processor and motherboard are 64-bit capable? You find the manufacturer’s mark and model number on both the mobo and CPU, (Look in Device Manager.) then you type them into the Google search-bar. (Google is your friend.) Read all the data you collect from the best links and see if there is any reference to them being 64-bit capable. If so in the case of both mobo and processor, then you’re in luck. If not; it’s time to buy/build a new computer.

If your computer is less than 3 years old then it would be safe to assume that it probably is 64-bit capable. Try installing a 64-bit operating system on it. If you haven’t bought your Windows 7 discs yet and don’t want to until you know for sure, try downloading a free 64-bit Ubuntu Linux distro from the internet, burning the ISO to disc, and dual-booting that with your existing OS, or test your box with a run of Linux 64-bit from the disc. If you find that you like Linux better then Windows then use Linux instead; it’s free after all. If you prefer Windows still then you can always uninstall Linux at any point in time.

I think that’s about all there is to say. – ‘Anybody else got anything they’d like to add to that?