Chapter 5: Plug and Play in Windows XP

Overview

We all are prisoners in the dungeon of our devices…

Plug and Pray!

Folklore

Many tasks related to configuring and fine-tuning the different operating systems from the Windows family (be it Windows 9x/ME, Windows NT/2000, or Windows XP) can be done using Control Panel applets. These applets are closely related to the registry. When you're viewing configuration information using Control Panel applets, this information is retrieved from the registry. On the other hand, all the configuration changes introduced using Control Panel applets are saved in the registry. This is the main reason why Windows NT 4.0 and all earlier Windows versions often required restarting after performing certain configuration changes. This is because the changes that you introduced wouldn't come into force until they were read from the registry during boot time.

Note 

Thus, the whole boot process is interrelated with the registry. To identify the boot stage when the registry is initialized, it's necessary to understand the processes that take place when Windows starts loading. These topics will be covered in detail in the next chapter.

Limited hardware support and frequent reboots were the most serious drawbacks of Windows NT. In Windows 2000 and its successor, Windows XP, these disadvantages were eliminated due to implementation of Plug and Play support. In this chapter, we will consider Plug and Play (PnP) concepts in more detail and cover the following topics:

• How the registry stores hardware information.

• Plug and Play specification, its evolution, and PnP support implemented in Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. We will pay special attention to PnP support enhancements that were introduced with Windows XP.

• Plug and Play specification and the registry, Plug and Play device detection, device installation and management.

• Advanced power management capabilities in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.