Windows 10 System Requirements

[HappyAndyK]

Windows 10 System Requirements are the same as what they are for Windows 8.1. If your PC can run Windows 8.1, you’re good to go. If you're not sure, Windows 10 will check your system to make sure it can complete the installation successfully.

Windows 10 System Requirements

1. Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster.
2. RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
3. Free hard disk space: 16 GB.
4. Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver.
5. A Microsoft account and Internet access
6. To access the Windows Store and to download and run apps, you need an Internet connection, a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768, and a Microsoft account.
7. If you're running Windows 8.1 but haven't installed Windows 8.1 Update yet
8. If you have Windows 8 Pro with Media Center and you install the preview, Windows Media Center will be removed.

Before you reserve your copy of the Windows 10 Upgrade or install Windows 10, it may be good idea to check your computer for device & app compatibility too.

[Clayto]

Free HDD space:16 GB? Despite the fact that I cant get hold of the Upgrade Assistant (a burning issue discussed elsewhere) I am fairly confident that my Windows 8.1 Tablet and software are compatible with the W10 upgrade apart from one thing --- the requirement for 16 GB free HDD(SSD) space. This is about twice what I have, after weeks of struggling to reduce the demands on the (C) Drive: by switching to portable apps/programs on the integral SD Memory Card (D), which I try to treat as if it were a partition of the main Drive; using Cloud Storage for all images, videos and documents; uninstalling all unnecessary programs (there were not many). What more can I do?

Programs now only account for a small percent of the main Drive storage. Apart from Windows itself the main category identified by a Disk analysis is 'Other files' --- what can I do about them? Can the free storage space on (D) the Memory Card be treated as part of the required storage space? if it can, that would solve the problem. Drive (C) has not been compressed but I understand that has drawbacks and would not make much difference anyway.

I have quite limited technical expertise. I would be very grateful for any ideas on how to deal with this issue, and especially an answer to my question on the role the Memory Card might or might not play.

clayto

[vasudev]

You can search for Disk cleanup Windows application, in the search result, right clcik on it and run as admin.
Run it choosing C Drive or on drive where OS is installed. It'll list what can be cleaned....and how much free space you can get. Also you might have to choose the option of System files to get more disk space.
Also check this for instructions.
Please note if this is your production machine and trying to install Windows Insider Preview take a back up or try the Insider Preview on any extra machine . As this is still Work in progress.

[HappyAndyK]

Try to identify what these "Other files" are.

You can also use the Command line version of Disk Cleanup Utility to clean more.

I also read that Windows 10 will support systems with compressed installations, and will be able to upgrade such systems or tablets with as little as 10 GB free space.

[Clayto]

Try to identify what these "Other files" are.

You can also use the Command line version of Disk Cleanup Utility to clean more.

I also read that Windows 10 will support systems with compressed installations, and will be able to upgrade such systems or tablets with as little as 10 GB free space.

Thanks for the response. I use several Disk cleaning utilities, not least Enhanced CCleaner and Glary Disk Cleaner plus Windows' own utility, on a very regular basis. They all do remove lots of MB and my storage would be much worse without them, but it has still fallen to as low as 5 GB now even though I have been removing programs / apps rather than adding new ones. I have seen (in print) that the upgrade for 'small devices', tablets and phones, may have the facility to save part of the installation to external storage if it finds a lack of space on the HDD / SSD. Have you any information on this? If it is true it would solve my issue, I can replace my 16 GB SD Memory Card (which I use like a (D) partition) with anything up to 132 GB. I have also heard that 'small devices', Tablets and phones, are in a second wave of upgrades because of storage issues and this is one reason why many of us have not got the icon and reservation app yet.

Also, do you know if Windows Store apps (which are going to work on the desktop) can be saved to external media in W10, as was possible with W 8 but not 8.1. That would greatly ease the problem.

I have not used compression as I have been advised it is not very effective (only limited space savings) and has drawbacks such as speed reduction. I will see what I can do about identifying the 'other' files.

It is fortunate we have some time to get issues such as these sorted out.

clayto

[HappyAndyK]

Windows 10 will let you install/save Store apps to another drive.

[Clayto]

Yes, I have now seen a detailed article about saving to external drives from Windows 10. This is good news for those of us with major storage issues on the main HDD.

I found that the high percentage of 'other files' --- around 50% --- on my C Drive was due to a crude presentation of the statistics in one of the disk analysis tools I use.
In fact other tools gave much more detail with the 'other filese' as little as 1% to 5% .

I am now trying to find out more about the option of installing Windows 10 via an ISO Disk image and the relevance of this to the lack of HDD storage space.

clayto

[Clayto]

It seems now that W10 itself will be easier to use for those of us with 'small devices', Tablets with small HDDs, as more can be installed on Memory Cards / USB Drives than has been the case with W 8.1. My big problem is going to be getting W10 Installed on my Tablet in the first place as I have so little free storage space (around 5 to 6 GB). One suggestion I have been given is to carry out a factory reset after saving files to external media and then a clean install of W10 for which I should have enough space.

This came from the supplier of my Quantum View Tablet. It seems an interesting possibility, if MS does not come up with other route(s). I would welcome opinions on this. I might pay my local technician to do this for me, he has already carried out one clean install after I had Windows failure following a Windows update. I had to reinstall a lot of programs but it would be less this time as I have replaced them with portable programs / apps on the Memory Card.

clayto