Hardware profiles, whjich are set by a systems administrator, describe which pieces of hardware are enabled or disabled when a system is booted under a given profile.
Administrators often need a way to implement different device configurations. They can do this by enabling and disabling devices, but this can be a tedious and time-consuming process. A quicker way of implementing multiple device configurations is through the use of hardware profiles.
Using hardware profiles allows an admin to create different device configurations and load them quickly by selecting the appropriate profile during OS startup. Hardware profiles are mostly used with mobile workstations and servers. For instance, on a portable computer with a Plug and Play-compatible docking station, two profiles will be created and loaded automatically as needed: a docked profile for when the computer is connected to the network, and an undocked profile for when the computer is disconnected from the docking station.
An admin can also create hardware profiles for different device configurations. For example, an admin could have a standard profile that includes the standard devices for internal RAID controllers and drive arrays and a test profile that includes external Fiber Channel storage devices. They could then test out the FC storage devices using the second profile and switch back to the standard device set when the testing is finished.
To create and manage hardware profiles:
You can also determine how long the system displays the hardware profile menu at startup. If you don't want the hardware profile menu to be displayed, set a wait of 0 seconds.
Configuring multiple hardware profiles
If you need to work with different hardware profiles, you'll want to simplify the creation of new hardware profiles. To do so, use a copy of an existing profile and then enable or disable devices as necessary. To create and use a new profile:
To configure devices for additional profiles, repeat Step 7.
Microsoft's own documentation on this feature in XP has more detail.
Windows Vista doesn't seem to support the profiles feature anymore, but that may only be because the user interface for it has been removed, not because the feature has been completely eliminated. It's possible to set a given service to load or not load for a particular profile, but those profiles appear to be created and managed automatically.
About the author: Rahul Shah currently works at a software firm in India, where he is a systems administrator maintaining Windows servers. He has also worked for various software firms in testing and analytics, and also has experiences deploying client/server applications in different Windows configurations.
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30 Apr 2007