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Is there a way to check whether the hardware and software on a PC is compatible with Windows 10 (other then checking each hardware component and every installed software with its manufacturer)? I'm not talking about the Windows Upgrade advisor, because it only checks whether an upgrade (not a clean new installation) would be possible, i.e. when the operating system cannot be upgraded (95, XP, ME, NT, Vista,...), then there is no upgrade advisor for it. I'm especially looking for a tool able to be run on Win XP.

The use of Win 7 or Win 8 upgrade advisor (UA) is not helpful, because Win7UA reported things as not compatible which were than reported as compatible by Win8UA, i.e. if the Win8UA tells me that something is not compatible with Win 8, it still might be compatible with Win 10, and if something is compatible with Win 8, it might still be incompatible with Win 10 (and there were things reported as incompatible with Win 8 which nevertheless did work with 8 without problems). I would not like to find out incompatibility the hard way by just testing Win 10.

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    Find out the hard way: get a preview iso, and test an installation?
    – Jogai
    Jul 16, 2015 at 14:19
  • @Jogai: That is exactly what I do not want to do (see last sentence of my question). If it does work, this is fine, but if it does not work, this could mean that I installed Win 10, installed a lot of software, found something is not compatible, reinstalled Win XP, and again installed that bunch of software, which all in all might take a week or two.
    – Burgmeister
    Jul 18, 2015 at 10:55
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    Either install Win 10 on a second partition and/or hard drive and dual-boot. If you had a spare PC you could use that also. If you had a 64 bit OS now you could virualize Win 10 in a virtual machine and test most software.
    – cybernard
    Jul 21, 2015 at 3:38
  • @cybernard: 2nd partition - good idea! In that case I have the old OS to "fall back to" and I can check hardware compatibility. To check the software compatibility I would need to install the software in question, but there will be no "upgrade advisor" telling me the compatibility of every installed software anyway. Could you post your comment as answer (directly including the content of this comment), please?
    – Burgmeister
    Jul 25, 2015 at 12:31
  • When the win 10 sdk is released, there might be, but I don't know. As a rule for 99% of software, Anything compatible with Win 7 will work on Win 10.
    – cybernard
    Jul 25, 2015 at 16:45

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cybernard suggested in a comment (Jul 21 at 3:38, but did not post as answer):

Either install Win 10 on a second partition and/or hard drive and dual-boot. If you had a spare PC you could use that also. If you had a 64 bit OS now you could virualize Win 10 in a virtual machine and test most software.

When installing Win 10 on a second partition I have the old OS to "fall back to" and I can check hardware compatibility. To check the software compatibility I would need to install the software in question, but there will be no "upgrade advisor" telling me the compatibility of every installed software anyway.

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