Windows 10 Hardware Recommendations

Windows 10 is UWIT’s recommended PC operating system.  If you use a computer that is still on Windows 7, UWIT recommends that you upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as possible.  If you are still running windows 7, you will soon start receiving windows 10 upgrade notifications.  UWIT is making the upgrade process easy. Simply answer a few questions in our request form here to get your information to our upgrade team. 

Microsoft will be discontinuing support for Windows 7 in January 2020.  This means that Microsoft will no longer issue security patches for Windows 7, leaving your computer very susceptible to viruses and malware. 

For the protection of the University and other users, computers still running Windows 7 when support ends will have to be removed from the UW network

Windows 10 Enterprise is being made available through UWIT and should be installed on all UW owned computer devices through UWIT’s imaging process.  The minimum computer hardware system requirements to run a bare windows 10 install as recommended by Microsoft are: 

• 1GHz or faster processor
• 2GB RAM
• 20GB available disk space
• Direct X 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
• TPM 1.2 or later is strongly recommended. 

The minimum system requirements to run the UW Windows 10 image (which includes the Windows 10 Enterprise OS, Microsoft Office 2016, Webroot Antivirus, Adobe Reader, Google Chrome and Firefox) as recommended by UW IT are: 

• 2.5GHz or faster processor
• 8GB RAM
• 250GB available disk space
• Direct X 11 graphics device with WDDM 1.2 or higher driver
• TPM 1.2 or later is strongly recommended. 

Some older model PCs will not be compatible with windows 10.   Systems older than a Dell Optiplex 790 may not be capable of running the UW system image.  Please see the vendor links below if you have questions about whether your computer is compatible:

Dell            HP            Toshiba          Lenovo            ASUS            Sony          Panasonic           GIGABYTE            MSI