Windows 2000 Quick Fixes

Use different hardware settings at different times

Although disabling a device to overcome a conflict isn’t difficult, it does take a few steps to complete. A hardware profile can give you the same results and works automatically at startup. Each hardware profile stores a system configuration by name. You can select the hardware profile to use at startup, or, in many cases, Windows 2000 can detect the appropriate profile automatically.

For example, assume you use a PC Card network adapter in your notebook computer at some times, and a network adapter in a docking station at other times. Also assume the two adapters need to use the same resources, so they conflict if both are enabled. To resolve the conflict without requiring that you disable one of the adapters each time you boot, you can create two hardware profiles called Docked and Undocked, each of which has the appropriate driver enabled and the other disabled. When Windows 2000 boots, it automatically detects whether or not the system is docked and uses the appropriate hardware profile automatically. If Windows 2000 is unable to determine which hardware profile to use, it prompts you at startup to select the desired profile.

Set up hardware profiles

Setting up hardware profiles is a two-phase process: first you create a profile, then you selectively disable devices in the profile. By default, Windows 2000 enables a device for all hardware profiles, but you can boot with a specific profile, then configure the device in Device ...