Hardware profiles offer the ability to start a system with different hardware without reinstalling the drivers. This is often used by laptops. E.g. sometimes they start with a docking station, sometimes without. When Windows 2000 boots, it automatically tries to detect which hardware profile should be used. If two profiles are almost the some, the user has to choose.
Information about the hardware profiles is stored in the registry. The data is managed via Hardware tab on the System applet in the control panel. Via Hardware profiles it offers the ability the copy, rename and delete hardware profiles. Via the properties button you can enable or disable the profile. To disable specific devices in a hardware profile, use the general tab for a device in the Device manager. You can set the device to be used in every profile, to not use in it this profile and the disable it in all profiles. The first hardware profile (Profile 1 Current) is load by default.
If there is more than one hardware profile, you can set the number of seconds to wait before choosing a hardware profile. The default settings is 30 seconds, when the setting is set to 0 the first default profile is chosen.
You can also disable services for a specific hardware profile via the Services applet in the control panel. You can enable or disable services per hardware profile on the Log on tab of a service.
| How to create hardware profiles on Windows 2000 mobile computers ? (Microsoft) |
| How to create hardware profiles ? (NTFaq) |
| How to disable a device (NTFaq) |
Last update : 30 December 2000