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How To Check If Your Processor (CPU) Supports Windows 8

Posted June 6, 2012 – 5:24 pm in: Windows 8 Guides
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Windows 8 RP has officially been released with new features and improvements. Users who are planning to upgrade from Windows 7 or Windows 8 CP to Windows 8 RP 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.

Windows 8 Logo

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.

 

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.

Check If Your Processor Supports Windows 8

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.

Check If Processor Supports Windows 8

 

Don’t forget to verify if your processor supports Windows 8 Hyper-V feature.

  Tags: Freeware for Windows
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15 Comments

  1. mikmik
    Posted June 7, 2012 at 8:00 pm | Permalink

    You can also just drag and drop the coreinfo.exe into the cmd terminal instead of typing the path. It will appear automatically.

  2. admin
    Posted June 7, 2012 at 9:16 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for the tip.

  3. Andreas
    Posted June 12, 2012 at 12:59 pm | Permalink

    I would much rather see an article on how to check if Windows 7 users need the upgrade to Windows 8.
    -
    I think we do not at all.
    For us Windows 8 is a stillborn microsoft child.
    There is nothing that justifies the money wasted on an upgrade.

  4. Faizan Ali
    Posted September 10, 2012 at 10:52 am | Permalink

    AW YEAH MY CPU supports NX, PAE and SSE4.2 and its not even a i7 its a simple Pentium D 945 3.4GHz

  5. mikey1352
    Posted November 1, 2012 at 5:22 am | Permalink

    I tried “coreinfo” it runs, but it won’t stay open. It just flashes on briefly, then disappears.

  6. Rick
    Posted November 2, 2012 at 8:32 pm | Permalink

    I have the same problem with Coreinfo not staying open. Anyone got a clue as to why it does that?

  7. brainout
    Posted November 4, 2012 at 1:10 pm | Permalink

    It does that because the guy who wrote the program, wrote it wrong. The program ends with an EXIT command, rather than staying open. So it runs, but you can’t see its output.

    Since it’s an exe rather than a bat file, you can’t edit it to fix this simple bug, and you’ll have to wait MONTHS before someone actually tells the guy it’s buggy.

    So I guess MS will lose sales, since no sane person would buy an upgrade which says it needs the mysterious ‘NX’, but you can’t tell if it’s in YOUR BIOS.

    So that’s one more reason to avoid Windows 8. Not a good sign, when the Advisor itself can’t work and the program MS says you need to run, also won’t work.

  8. brainout
    Posted November 4, 2012 at 1:35 pm | Permalink

    HERE’S HOW TO FIX THE CORE INFO BUG.

    Copy the coreinfo.exe to your root directory.
    Open Notepad and then type in it what’s BETWEEN the tildes
    ~~~~~~~~~~~
    coreinfo.exe
    PAUSE
    ~~~~~~~~~~~

    Now save those two lines as ‘core.bat’ or any other name you like, so long as you use a ‘bat’ extension.

    Then hit Start Run, and in the dialogue box type the name of that file.

    Now the DOS window will stay open, but it’s at the end of the file, so you have to scroll up to read it.

  9. GazzMan
    Posted November 20, 2012 at 2:32 pm | Permalink

    mikey1352 & Rick press windows key & R together then browse to the directory of the coreinfo file and then type the file name in. Window will display information
    By the way my i7 720qm processor dosen’t support NX :-(

  10. Protocol1972
    Posted November 28, 2012 at 2:55 am | Permalink

    “Coreinfo not staying open”
    Try running CMD as Administrator,

  11. Chris
    Posted December 30, 2012 at 6:27 pm | Permalink

    Hey guys if you are still looking and if coreinfo is not staying open try running in the cmd box the following: If the CMD already shows C:\Users\Yourusername>
    Place the following to make it run:
    downloads\coreinfo\coreinfo.exe

    This is what worked for me.

  12. nitindodiya
    Posted January 4, 2013 at 8:55 pm | Permalink

    my pc. cor 2 deo 3gb rem 500 GB disc not supported
    windows 8 but y

  13. jajaja
    Posted March 3, 2013 at 2:14 am | Permalink

    very usefull and so easy thank you very much

  14. cheid
    Posted April 18, 2013 at 11:49 am | Permalink

    If your Coreinfo window closes too fast, you can make a text file in Coreinfo folder with .bat extention and following contents ‘Coreinfo.exe >>log.txt’. Run this .bat file and it will write all info in the log.txt, located in Coreinfo folder.

  15. ken
    Posted May 17, 2013 at 2:41 am | Permalink

    thank you, it worked just as in your instructions “use the cmd prompt, and type in the exact address of the coreinfo.exe location.
    my hp pavillion a230n does not support.
    I agree w8 is a waste of good money and will stay with w7 i read that MS is rethinking w8 and some big changes are coming soon.
    ken

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