Will my Pentium 4 or Celeron run Windows 8?

Q: (from Paul)

I have tried to install the Windows 8 preview on a machine with a Pentium 4 at 3.40 GHz and it says my processor is not compatible. Any suggestions or explanations?  I also tried a celeron machine with the same result.

 

A:

I Bing’d “Can a Pentium 4 run Windows 8” and found the following article that might provide an explanation:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/windows-8-release-preview-doesnt-boot-on-pentium-4/44695558-643e-488f-b964-ecf9d293de95

Which references a parent article:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/error-when-installing-windows-8-release-preview/a2c11f2c-d43b-44fc-9bc0-61805a2d95ef

Where the following explanation is provided:

To install Windows 8 Release Candidate on your PC, the processor (CPU) must support the following features: Physical Address Extension (PAE), NX, and SSE2. Most CPUs have support for these features, so if you receive this error, it is likely because the NX feature is not enabled on your system.

 

SDeming Face  Steve