Will Windows 7 run on this?

My parents old IBM finally got a virus that requires us to reformat the drive. I have a Signature edition of Windows 7 I haven't installed on anything yet.

Would it run on this pc:
It's a P4 2.8GHz Socket 478 running 1 GB of DDR. It has onboard video or a dedicated GPU if needed, but it would only be a old 6xxx series nvidia AGP card.

Hooked up to a CRT monitor, maybe 17 inches.

It just needs to run as well as the Windows XP SP3 it would be replacing. At most it is used for internet browsing and MS Word (Office XP/2003 or Open Office).

Would it be okay? Doesn't have to be amazing, just as good as it was with XP.

My roommates old computer actually managed to run Win7 on an old dell system with very similar specs i think the CPU was slightly faster though, and it was a 775. Suprisingly it ran better than xp did booted faster and loaded apps better.

I've had Windows 7 running on a machine with 512Mb ram and only a 64Mb GFX card. It worked fine, even in Aero, if not a bit sluggish due to the extra GFX processing

There is a tool from Microsoft - Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

It will tell you what drivers & hardware are incompatible & make recommendations for upgrading.

EDIT: Orbital Shark is correct and is more knowledgeable in this area. the Upgrade Advisor is merely another tool that can be used to help accomplish the task at hand.

the upgrade tool was the obvious answer, but since the computer is so infected, I would have to reformat before installing that, and that won't do.

Hondajt said:

the upgrade tool was the obvious answer, but since the computer is so infected, I would have to reformat before installing that, and that won't do.

Even if you have to reformat I know there are tons of gurus like Orbital Shark who can help you to install Windows 7. There was a contest a while back between gurus/members of who could run windows 7 on the oldest computer ( can't remember the exact name of the thread offhand ) but a good example would be: I got windows 7 to run on a Commodore 64.

If you have to format the machine anyway then there's no harm in installing Windows 7 onto it. If it doesn't run as you'd like (and I think it will ) then you can always try another OS.