Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

Device Manager — PP

Synopsis

Displays and manages hardware on local and remote computers.

Description

Device Manager makes it easy to manage hardware devices by providing a simple GUI interface for performing actions such as:

• Enabling, disabling, and uninstalling devices

• Installing updated drivers for devices

• Diagnosing IRQ conflicts and other resource conflicts

• Manually reconfiguring IRQ and other resource settings to resolve conflicts

• Generating a printed report of your computer’s hardware-configuration settings to aid in future troubleshooting efforts

The Windows 2000 Device Manager console has no counterpart in Windows NT since that platform was not Plug and Play. It does have a counterpart with a tab in the System utility on Windows 95 and Windows 98, however.

With the Plug and Play functionality of Windows 2000, you should need to use Device Manager only rarely since Windows 2000 should automatically prompt you when new hardware is added and should resolve most resource conflicts itself. However, you may find yourself using Device Manager when:

• You obtain updated device drivers from the manufacturers and want to install them on your system.

• Your system contains legacy devices that cannot have their resource settings properly assigned by the Windows 2000 Plug and Play enumerator.

Using Device Manager

You can access Device Manager in several ways:

• Start → Programs → Administrative Tools → Computer Management → System Tools → Device Manager

• Start → Settings → Control Panel → System → Hardware ...