Assessing Your Hardware in Windows 7 Deployments
One of the most important assessments to be done to prepare for a Windows 7 migration is to gather hardware information about the systems that will be migrated to Windows 7 (replacing Windows XP with Windows 7 for example).
Although you can get good information from System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) if being used in your environment, Microsoft provides a free tool that automatically provides to you device driver compatibility information. The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) solution accelerator can scan your systems (no agent needed) and report which device drivers used by your systems are included in the Windows 7 DVD, which ones are available from Microsoft Update, which are available from the manufacturer’s Web site, and which drivers need to be investigated by you.
The MAP tool has more features that overlap with some other tools (such as SCCM or the Application Compatibility Toolkit). However, it excels in getting you knowledge about the device drivers being used in your environment, and provides compatibility guidance. You can download the tool from this link:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb977556.aspx
You can install it on your Windows 7 workstation to play with it and access the documentation. It has a great “Getting Started Guide” to help you prepare, including information on how to create a Windows Firewall exception on your machines (using group policies) so they can be remotely scanned by the tool.
