Windows 8 has officially been released with new features and improvements. Users who are planning to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 shouldn’t go by the system requirements given in the official page as many users are receiving “Your PC’s CPU isn’t compatible with Windows 8” error while upgrading to Windows 8.
The error occurs when a user tries to upgrade to Windows 8 on a machine that doesn’t support PAE, NX, and SSE2 features. Users who have are getting the error should check out the BIOS for NX entries and enable the same. If the feature isn’t available, there is no working method available to install Windows 8.
Even though most processors support these features, it makes sense to check if your PC’s CPU supports PAE, NX, and SSE2 features before starting the installation procedure. So, how to check if your PC’s processor supports above mentioned features? Simple, download and run a small command-line utility named Coreinfo to see if you can install Windows 8 on your PC.
Follow the given below instructions to know how to use the Coreinfo tool to verify if your PC’s processor supports PAE, NX, and SSE2 features.
Check if your CPU supports Windows 8/8.1
Step 1: Download Coreinfo tool zip file from here and extract the file to get coreinfo.exe file.
Step 2: Open Command Prompt by entering CMD in Start menu search box and pressing enter key. If you are on Windows 8 CP or DP, switch to Start screen, type CMD and then press enter key to launch the same.
Step 3: In the command prompt and enter the full path to the coreinfo.exe file and then press the Enter key. For example, if you have saved the coreinfo.exe file on desktop, you have to enter C:\Users\YourUserName\Desktop\Coreinfo.exe and press enter key.
Step 4: In the result, check for PAE, NX, and SSE2 entries. If your processor supports a feature, you will see * character next to the feature name, and – character if not supported. As you can see the below screenshot, our processor supports PAE, NX, and SSE2 features.
Don’t forget to verify if your processor supports Windows 8 Hyper-V feature.
