Hardware Profiles

johngalt · 11 Sep 2009

One thing though - HPs were not about guests and hosts - they were the same OS using different profiles, enabling and disabling hardware items. My method will do the same using multiple booting OSs - not rel host and guest, in the sense that only one OS is running at any given time.

However, Antman is right - I answered the question without really addressing the practicality of the solution. In this case I can understand the OPs concern as to why this was removed, and have thought more than once that it would be nice to make one for gaming exclusively - some of the hardware on my machine is not gaming related, and when you're playing games fully maxed out in settings for a stunning visual presentation, every little bit helps.

Also, consider this - nVidia drivers were 77 MB last time I checked, for my GTX 260s. The mobo driver package was at 100+, and the driver and software package for my Saitek Cyborg RumblePad v3 weighed in at 75 MB - with an additional 200 MB for the friggin software.

Even with hyper-efficient memory management, if I play a game that has no support for allowing me to use a gamepad (perish the though!) disabling that particular device could save me enough memory for a modest (5%) increase in performance - but, again, every little bit counts.

powder21 · 12 Sep 2009

Woops...been a while since I checked back here. I like your suggestion johngalt, my only problem is that it is just more difficult than it needs to be as opposed to the HW profiles solution and, as you guys mentioned, a little less practical...especially only with 2Gigs of RAM on my system (unless I'm mistaken as to the performance of running a seperate OS on a virtual disk).

Anyways, I will probably just solve this issue the same way I squeeze every ounce of performance out of my notebook as I can for gaming....with a seperate physical system. However, before I do this I will most certainly see how Win7 reacts with the external and internal sound cards as it may not even be an issue.

On a side note, if you would like to squeeze performance out of your own computer for gaming, you might try doing what I do. I use an absolutely wonderful little gadget known as BootIt-NG which installs an 8MB partition at the front of the disk acting as it's own MBR. This then supports as many primary partitions and different OS's I would like whether they be the same OS or completely different OS's... When I was in school, I had two installs of XP (one was for gaming of course), two different distro's of Linux, an install of Server 2003, and an install of Server 2008...the last four OS's came in very handy for learning purposes. What's best about this software is that it only costs 35 bucks. It's also very easy to use once you get the hang of it, yet very powerful as well. One of the sweetest little gems that I have ever come accross. Thought you might like to know.

P.S. The software also doubles as a fully featured partition management software. It's made by Terabyte Unlimited. Here's a link...
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.htm

Barman58 · 12 Sep 2009

Following on from Antman's suggestion one other way would be Powershell which contains the functionality to check for and enable or disable the devices on the system.

This is only of any use if you have the required skills with the package but some sample code for device control is listed here ...
Powershell Script to Enable/Disable Network Connection - Software Development

If a script could be written to set the hardware active as required for the docked/undocked state, and run at start-up that would provide the functionality you had previously from HP.

Powershell is on my to do list to learn so can't be of any practical use but is is I believe a possible soloution

powder21 · 12 Sep 2009

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, as you mentioned, powershell requires a certain skillset which I have not yet developed. However, I will most certainly keep it in mind. Thanks again.

DeaconFrost · 14 Sep 2009

powder21 said:

On a side note, if you would like to squeeze performance out of your own computer for gaming, you might try doing what I do. I use an absolutely wonderful little gadget known as BootIt-NG which installs an 8MB partition at the front of the disk acting as it's own MBR.

All that does is over-complicate a system. Vista, and now Windows 7 didn't need all that tweaking to make it run at peak efficiency. If you know how to properly set up a system, you don't need separate physical systems to accomplish this. Why not just run the system at it's best all the time? It's true that XP needed a little help in the tweaking department, but even then, there was never a reason to setup multiple systems, multiple users, and all those other configs that led some to believe it was giving them a boost in performance.

The simple answer is, set the system up right, use common sense and common accepted best practices, and you'll be fine.

logicearth · 15 Sep 2009

johngalt said:

Even with hyper-efficient memory management, if I play a game that has no support for allowing me to use a gamepad (perish the though!) disabling that particular device could save me enough memory for a modest (5%) increase in performance - but, again, every little bit counts.

There is no need to disable anything, drivers are not stuck in RAM just like applications they can be removed from RAM. Very little of the kernel has to remain in RAM, in some cases could be around 50 MB to 200 MB.

I can assure you the actual driver for your gamepad is not 75 MB, the packaging around it might be, but the actual driver is much smaller. Around 2.5 MB - 3 MB. The same for all the others you mentioned.

Btw...you would not get a 5% increase...not even on a modest system. Maybe half a frame rate point.

The image below is the two supplied versions of the gamepad drivers for x64.

RADCOMJ1 · 07 Oct 2009

Hi my first post here. I found the site following the hardware profiles issue. I used to love hardware profiles it was great for testing different hardware setups. I currently have a very powerful current drining graphics card, it would be nice to not have it iniatilise when I just want to do some surfing. ( I could use an installed less powerful GPU) Is there any other way to do this ...in the BIOS perhaps?

logicearth · 07 Oct 2009

What Graphics card is it? There might be power saving features provided by the card that lowers it power consumption and heat when under little load.

RADCOMJ1 · 07 Oct 2009

It's a GECUBE ATI RADEON 4870 x2. There may be power saving options in the catalyst driver but the card is still not eco friendly. The hardware profile used to resolve these issues .......

andiih · 03 Dec 2009

I think there is a very good reason for hardware profiles - namely virtualization. I have an iMac with Boot Camp which allows it to boot windows 7 natively. Fine. But in OS X I can also run THE SAME COPY of windows (my bootcamp partition) via VMWare. The problem is that it is a different virtual hardware, and a different set of drivers. So as soon as I boot one way, I cripple the other. Very annoying. I thought that good old harware profiles would help solve this - but it seems not. Any other ideas ?