He has a celeron processor and only 1 gb ram. If it's a desktop and only has 40 gb hard drive.... Correct me if I'm wrong but that pc must 6 or more years older... I doubt that can run windows 7 well. He's better of sticking with windows xp or 98.
I beg to differ. IF he turns off aero and all other visual enhancements, and unwanted services, and...well if he just follows the guide I linked him to, it will run surprisingly smooth. I did it myself with an athlonXP 1600+ with 1gb ram and 25gb harddisk. How old is that machine, you think ?
I've recently installed Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit on an Sempron 2400-based system with just 1 gig of DDR400 and PATA hard drives (my two 160GB SATA2 Western Digital drives in this old machine both went bad within the past six months - yes this old motherboard has two SATA1 ports). I've installed Symantec Endpoint Protection v11 and Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 v9 and some free web server software and it runs just fine! This isn't my main machine, of course, but it would definitely still do for internet, email and even some slow DVD copying.
My guess is it dates back to Summer 2001. I built a system using that CPU and an Abit KG7. It's still going strong, though it's now on its 4th owner. I agree, Win7 should run fine with the eye candy turned off. Can never have too much HD space, and more RAM would help.