Configuring Hardware Profiles

Consider setting up several NT hardware profiles toreflect different configurations for your computer

If you've used Windows NT for a while, you've probably seen the message "Atleast one service or driver failed on system startup." Sometimes aperipheral is not connected, or in the case of a laptop computer, you are not onthe network. If you routinely work with varying configurations, consider settingup several hardware profiles to reflect each configuration, and put an end tothose annoying messages at startup.

Adding a New Hardware Profile
First, you need to add a new hardware profile. From the Start menu,Settings, Control Panel, go to the System folder, and select the HardwareProfiles tab in the dialog box. The first time you use this dialog box, theoriginal profile is the only one showing. It will serve as a template for thenew profiles.

Copy the original profile to a new profile, and give the copy a suiTablename. You can make several copies, each for a different hardware configuration,as Screen 1 shows. You can move the various profiles up or down in the list. Theprofile at the top of the list becomes the default.

During system startup, if you do not select a profile within a specifiedtime, your system boots with the profile at the top of the list. As you see inthe Hardware Profiles dialog box in Screen 1, you can vary the startup timeout.

Configuring a Hardware Profile
Now that the hardware profiles are in place, you can customize them for eachhardware configuration. NT helps with the porTable computer profileconfiguration. Select the porTable configuration that you'll use when theporTable is not connected to the network (in my example in Screen 1, I've namedit On the Road). Click Properties to get the dialog box in Screen 2. Theoptions let you specify whether to use this profile when the computer isconnected to the network or when it's off the network. For this travelingprofile, select The computer is undocked. Then go to the network tab tospecify that this profile is a Network-disabled hardware profile, asScreen 3 shows.

The second new profile takes a little more work but is still easy toconFigure. I set up this profile because I have an Exabyte tape drive that isnot always connected to the SCSI controller (I can move it around from system tosystem). Of course, when the tape drive is not connected, a warning appears onstartup because the device driver will not load unless it detects the hardware.To conFigure this profile, exit the Hardware Profiles tab and the SystemProperties folder, but keep the Control Panel open. Open the Devices folder, andfind the device that you want to conFigure. I've chosen the exabyte1 devicedriver, as Screen 4 shows.

With the appropriate device driver selected, click HW Profiles to open theprofile configuration dialog box. Then enable or disable the device driver foreach profile. In my tape drive example, the device driver will load only if I'veselected the Exabyte profile. You can turn multiple device drivers on or off foreach profile. If you are not sure which devices to conFigure, check the EventViewer. The Event Viewer system log will list any devices that fail to load.

Configuring Services
So far, I've looked at configuring devices for each profile. But, you canalso conFigure services. For example, in the network-disabled profile, supposeyou want to turn off the Messenger service. This service is not turned offautomatically when you conFigure the computer to be off the network, so you'llget a warning message when the service tries to start up. You conFigure servicesthe same way that you conFigure devices. When you finish configuring the devicedrivers and the services, close all the dialog boxes, and restart NT.

Selecting a Hardware Profile
You select the hardware profile during NT startup. You will see a message topress the spacebar to invoke the Hardware Profile/Last Known Good Configurationmenu. If you set a time delay on the profile choices, the system will show theavailable choices, wait for the delay time, and start with the first profile onthe list unless you specify otherwise. Now that you've conFigured hardwareprofiles, your system will boot without any warning messages and entries in theEvent Log.

The Network-Disabled Profile
PorTable computer users will find the network-enabled or network-disabledchoice useful. Ordinarily, when NT does not find the network (or the networkcard, which is back at the office in the docking station), you'll see a cascadeeffect as all the network services fail.

Let's look at what happens when you activate the network-disabled profile.Go back into the Control Panel, Device dialog box, and find your network carddevice drivers. Click HW Profiles. In my example, Screen 5 shows that thenetwork card is disabled for the On the Road profile.

The Future of Hardware Profiles
The implementation of NT hardware profiles is not as far-reaching or asthorough as in Windows 95. That situation results from the lack of plug-and-playsupport and effective PC Card support in NT 4.0. Expect to see morecomprehensive support for features such as PC Cards, hot docking and undocking,and plug-and-play in NT 5.0. But while you are waiting for NT 5.0, takeadvantage of the many situations in which you can conFigure and use hardwareprofiles on NT 4.0.