Hardware Profiles

Blue for Black said:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Sam>c:\users\sam\downloads\devcon.exe
devcon.exe Usage: devcon.exe [-r] [-m:\\<machine>] <command> [<arg>...]
For more information, type: devcon.exe help

C:\Users\Sam>

Please let me know if I'm missing something, doing something wrong, etc. If you need more info to determine it, just let me know.

Thanks,
Sam

Two things:
1. You must run devcon as an administrator
2. Run "devcon help" and you'll get help for the commands.

Basically, what I did, I had devcon list the hw for me and put the list in a file:
devcon hwids * > hwids.txt
Then I opened that file in a text editor and looked for the HW-ID of the battery controller and the wi-fi.

Then I created a bat-file with the following commands
devcon disable "PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_4235"
devcon disable "ACPI\PNP0C0A"
The first disables the wi-fi, the second disables the battery controller.

Then a corresponding bat-file to enable those devices
devcon enable "PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_4235"
devcon enable "ACPI\PNP0C0A"

Once I had these bat-files, I had to make a shortcuts to them, so that they could be run as administrator. This is a must. Always use the shortcuts.

In addition, in the same bat-files, I disable anti-virus, and a whole bunch of services that aren't necessary once the wi-fi is disabled. This looks like
sc stop Dhcp
You have to experiment a little with your own particular setup, but it's not too hard, and all of it basically corresponds to defining a different HW-profile. You can of course have several disable/enable bat-files, one set for each HW-profile you need.

Every now and again this thread gets resurrected with a few new ideas but HW profiles was just quick and easy. I don't want to run my huge power consuming graphics card for surfing the net, a simple surfing and gaming profile would suit me without having to resort to dual boot. Maybe I'll try hyperOS.

DeaconFrost said:

What would you need a hardware profile for, in this day and age? I remember setting them up in NT 4.0 for docked and undocked status on a laptop. I haven't seen a need for doing so since those days.

one word.... GAMING

So, how about if I want my laptop to disable wireless adaptor while docked so that I can use the wired ethernet attached to the docking station? Vice versa, enable wireless when laptop is undocked. HW Profiles would have helped in this case. Anyone know of a way to accomplish this? For now I have a desktop icon that runs Wireless Assistant with command line parameters to manually enable/disable depending on docked status. Got to be a better way.

Same case here. I'm used to running several OS simultaneously out of one box for SW development purposes.
To do so, I run VirtualBox. I've got a powerful laptop with a dual boot with Ubuntu and W7.

Most of the time I boot out of the Ubuntu disk as host OS and boot various other OS as guests (it's a 16GB RAM laptop with i7 720QM - showing 8 CPUs).

Most guest OS live in their own dedicated VMDs, basically 50GB files on the Linux disks.
Except for the W7 partition which has its own 750GB disk, in the state it was when I purchased the laptop.
As you may know, with virtualbox, you can also, all precautions taken, boot a guest OS from a real partition (termed in this case raw disk).

However, I sometimes need to boot the native Windows partition natively rather than as a VirtualBox guest. It used to be easy with XP hardware profiles.

Not any more !!

I can still boot the native W7 inside VirtualBox as a guest. But when I try to boot it natively, W7 tries to reconfigure things and ends up displaying a grey screen (after spinning the disk for ages) thereby showing it's stuck somewhere or can't access the graphic card....
I can "repair" things but the same thing happens each time.

So now I'm using W7 only as a guest.

I can't help noticing that HW profiles have disappeared from the radar precisely when MS have tightened their anti-piracy policy and virtualization has arrived in the Wintel arena. Are we just witnessing yet another revenue protection measure ? (like when Intel would consent rebates to OEMs disabling VT in their BIOS ?).

So I also have a legitimate use for Hardware Profiles. I am a cross platform programmer with a gamer husband. I have multiple valid licenses for my Windows 7 activations. My husband and I are very social and when I am programming, I like to be in the same room as him. He is an enthusiastic gamer so even when we are both home, he is usually logged in. The problem is, his computer is the only one in the house with virtualization so its the only one I can use to program. Mine has less RAM, less powerful Windows version, inferior processor, etc. His monitor is also the biggest in the house. He has agreed to use the inferior machine when I want to program when he's home as long as he gets the larger monitor and we can't afford to just buy another monitor. Though large real estate is nice, when I am programming, I would rather have a smaller screen and be in the same room. What I'd like to do is have both systems set up at all times and just change which monitor is the primary depending on which Windows profile I open on his computer. The other computer is irrelevant. Ideally, when he opens his, only his monitor activates, when I open mine, both monitors activate with the larger asthe primary and when I open the one for when he wants to game at the swame time, it only uses the smaller monitor. Here's another way to look at it.

Husband profile:
Computer 1 (uber) - 24" monitor
Computer 2 (inferior) - 17" monitor

Wife profile:
Computer 1 (uber) - 24" monitor and 17" monitor
Computer 2 (inferior) - off

Husband is benevolent profile:
Computer 1 (uber) - 17" monitor
Computer 2 (inferior) - 24" monitor

If anyone knows of a way that I can already do this, please let me know.

thanks
Kazlady

That sounds like a true love story. :) How are your PCs and monitors wired to each other and in between?

I kind of think it is

Here's my setup:

Computer 1 (uber) - DVI out to 24" monitor DVI in, VGA out to 17" monitor
Computer 2 (inferior) - VGA out to 24" monitor VGA in (24" monitor has dual input)

It works fine, it's just annoying to have to re-setup the monitors every time I use them.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

(as an unrelated side note, this is the first time I've ever used dual monitors and I kind of like having the smaller monitor for side stuff like maps while I'm gaming and Internet webpages with sample code while I'm programming. I don't get that when hubby is playing but it's nice when he's not around)

ibanez0r said:

DeaconFrost said:

What would you need a hardware profile for, in this day and age? I remember setting them up in NT 4.0 for docked and undocked status on a laptop. I haven't seen a need for doing so since those days.

one word.... GAMING

3rd post on this once active always useful forum. I (want to!) use my Dell XPS L502x to watch stuff, and develop stuff, and play with and hopefully one day develop google labs.

I would love a quick load, barebones profile, and a development profile, and maybe one to utilise the two soundcards and awesome mic... I don't know how (else) to do this except with devcon, which has been a while since I've attempted such a solution. Maybe Mcafee and Indexing and all the other little things happening constantly, and collectively, is resulting in the (lack of) performance.

Any suggestions, including ways to monitor performance (load time of OS and particular apps/suites, consumers of resources over time, particular KPIs to keep an eye on... I have TuneUp Utils which gives further insights, and it looks like there's lots more provided by MS in W7HP... I come from the land of XP )

Thanks guys really interesting and useful thread.