Hardware Profiles Missing In Windows 7

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In Windows XP, there is a feature called Hardware Profiles using which you can define configurations to be chosen at startup. You can make profiles containing a list of installed devices that can be enabled or disabled and add it to startup. You will not find this feature in Windows Vista or Windows 7.

 

Microsoft has removed the feature starting from Windows Vista. And do you think you will miss it? Probably Not. Those were the days when there were no Plug and Play devices. Each hardware driver need to be configured separately, where in feature like Hardware Profiles become necessary.

Modern devices are Plug and Play ready which are capable of installing and uninstalling drivers dynamically, thus eliminating the need of “Hardware Profiles”.

Published on January 18, 2010

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  • BrunoJCM

    You’re completely wrong about the need of hardware profiles.

    They are extremely necessary when you want to boot a windows instance both natively and virtualized. If you dont setup hardware profiles, every time you boot in native after virtual or virtual after native (change hardware) you will be prompted to re-register your windows copy. It’s easy solved in Windows XP with Hardware profiles.

    Microsoft always stepping back….

  • Darshak Thakore

    I totally agree with Bruno. IMHO, Hardware Profiles was one feature in Windows that i wished was there in Linux. Now with HP’s gone, i think Windows has gone backwards with their feature set.

  • RorMc

    This is yet another example of Microsoft (M$) taking a piss on the general public by removing a feature and then putting a positive marketing spin on it (they’ve always had a really bad driver installation experience).

    step 1: notice that people are using their software on the same computer for the same purpose but its inside a virtual machine on the competitions Operating System. And its all because of “hardware profiles”.
    step 2: Add better driver installation experience and supply more default drivers to windows and remove Hardware profiles. (lets face it device ids have been here for years they could have done this with XP)
    step 3: Setup policies and license agreements which treat virtualized environments a separate entities, there have been lots of changes lately here.
    step 4: Laugh at the little guy. (Again…Just like they do when they give large discounts to the large corps who don’t actually need the price cuts)

    -

  • http://www.wildhorsepm.com/ Carlos

    In my case, hardware profiles were very useful with my laptops — since I have different setups for different purposes (different types of monitors, docking stations, etc.) it was very convenient to setup screen orientation, resolution, default recording devices, etc. based on specific hardware profiles. It had nothing to do with driver loading–I think for a lot of us IT geeks this was a well-used feature that makes an otherwise great OS troublesome in dynamic environments.

  • Jacob Lorensen

    I can only agree with both Carlos and Bruno above. In my situation I need to run both my Windows 7 partition and my Linux partition virtualized and natively. That is:

    I boot Windows 7 and run Linux virtualized or
    I boot Linux and run Windows 7 virtualized

    Had this nicely set up with Windows XP and Linux, but with Windows 7 and no hardware profiles, I don’t see it happening. boo.

  • a

    What worked for me is just activating windows 7 again in the virtual machine. Now I can boot from both and neither one gripes about activation. If activation doesn’t work automatically like it did for me perhaps you could call the microsoft activation by phone hotline and explain the situation

  • Jman

    For me, the hardware profiles were great for on my corporate network. I have laptop users who never turn off their wireless network cards, so when they are in the office they grab 2 ip addresses. When traveling to different sites within our network, this causes issues. I used to be able to setup hardware profiles that were idiot proof. They could select “I’m in the office” which would disable wireless or they could select “I’m out of the office” which would disable the LAN.

    Silly Microsoft…..try not removing features as you move forward. They always just assume users don’t need certain features “oh they’ll love this!” Next thing you know they will start removing stuff like the calculator and notepad.

  • 0z

    I always use hardware profiles to configure Windows services, eg, to create streamlined configurations with unnecessary services switched off for better performance.