Installing and Configuring a New Device

Since its introduction in Windows 95, Plug and Play technology has evolved tremendously. Early incarnations of this technology were notoriously unreliable, leading some users to dismiss the feature as "plug and pray." In recent years, however, hardware and software standards have converged to make most device configuration tasks completely automatic. With true Plug and Play devices, Windows Vista handles virtually all of the work of configuring computer hardware and attached devices. For Plug and Play to work properly, all the pieces of a computer system must be capable of working together to perform hardware configuration tasks, specifically:

  • The system BIOS must be capable of responding to Plug and Play ...

Get Windows Vista™ Inside Out now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.