Mobile Computing

The Plug and Play support in Windows 2000 allows the operating system to configure devices quickly without requiring you to restart the computer. As a consequence, you can add or remove a device from the computer while it is running; and Windows 2000 allocates resources, loads the appropriate device drivers, and enables the device. Full Plug and Play support is useful for portable computers because the device configuration frequently changes to accommodate the user's environment (docked or undocked) and the user's needs (work remotely online, or work offline). For portable computers that are ACPI enabled, Plug and Play makes the following functionality possible:

• Hot docking and undocking.

• Hot swapping of Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) devices in device bays, such as hard drives, floppy drives, and CD-ROM drives.

• Automatic creation of docked and undocked hardware profiles.

• Dynamic configuration of PC Cards and CardBus cards without restarting the computer.

This section discusses the functionality presented in the preceding list and also hardware management issues such as surprise removal. For more information about installing, configuring, and troubleshooting devices, see Device Management in this book. For more information about hardware management, including power management and Plug and Play, see Hardware Support in this book.

Note

Full Plug and Play support is possible only if both the device and the device drivers support Plug and Play and the computer is ACPI-based. For computers that are not ACPI-based, Plug and Play recognizes hardware changes, but only after the computer is restarted.