In these sections you’ll find documentation that was developed in support of Windows 8 and previous operating systems. See Windows 8.1 for hardware devs to learn about how Windows 8.1 takes advantage of the latest technologies.
For Plug and Play and power management support under Windows operating systems, the system and its firmware must comply with the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification.
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have introduced breakthroughs in user experience, security, and reliability for end users. Hardware vendors, system manufacturers, and driver developers can use these advances to build next-generation products.
Windows Server 2008 introduced Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA) as a common infrastructure for handling hardware errors. WHEA uses richer error reporting to reduce mean time to recovery for fatal hardware errors and uses hardware health monitoring to reduce system crashes. These advances supplement support in Windows for solutions that use system management BIOS (SMBIOS), Web Services for Management (WS-Management), and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).
We design Windows operating systems to perform well out of the box. However, many factors affect actual performance: firmware design, applications that load at system startup, memory and I/O components, and the built-in capabilities of system components such as graphics, storage, and networking devices. To help system designers and manufacturers, we provide tools and information for the design and tuning of systems for best performance.
Properly implemented, Plug and Play provides automatic configuration of PC hardware and devices. For modern versions of Microsoft Windows, the system and its firmware must comply with ACPI. The driver architecture for Windows supports comprehensive, operating system–controlled Plug and Play.
A comprehensive approach to system configuration and device power control is built into Windows operating systems, based on the ACPI system interface and other new bus and device specifications. Windows supports capabilities that drivers and applications can exploit to improve the user's computing experience.
Windows takes advantage of virtualization assistance in hardware that is based on Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) and AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology. By doing this, Windows virtualization enables workloads such as server consolidation, efficient software development and testing, resource management for dynamic data centers, application rehosting and compatibility, and high-availability partitions.
Windows Server 2008 advances control and manageability, increases flexibility, and provides a solid foundation for more secure, more robust server environments.
