The standard to present the installed hardware is

1. Click Start and Settings
2. Control Panel and click on System
3. From the resulting dialog, click on Hardware tab
4. From the dialog click on Device Manager
   
   Windows XP Device Manager

Alternatively, the tool AIDA32 can be downloaded. When run it provides a comprehensive list of the installed hardware.

A Properties dialog box appears for that device. For example, the figure below shows the Properties dialog box for a DVD-RW drive.

The tabs shown above are typical of a CD-type device: General: All devices have this tab. It reports the device's status in Windows. (In the figure it's This device is working properly.)

• Properties: Devices with configurable options have this tab. It contains device-specific settings that you can adjust. For example, for a DVD drive, it lets you set the player volume.
• DVD Region: Only DVD drives have this tab. Depending on the device, there might be special-purpose tabs like this. This particular one happens to enable a choice of DVD playback regions.
• Volumes: Drives have this tab. It lists any logical disks set up on the drive (such as partitions).
• Driver: All devices that use a device driver have this tab. It's where you go to update or remove the device's driver. A driver is a piece of software that acts as a translator between the operating system and the hardware.
• Details: This tab is present for most devices when you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed. It contains a drop-down list of properties for the device; you can pick a property and see its setting.

Now let's look at another device's Properties dialog box together. This time you pick a device that has a Resources tab, such as the NIC (network interface card) shown in below.

A Properties dialog box Resources tab shows which system resources are assigned to the device. These are the types of resources that devices typically require:

• Memory Range: A memory address (in hexadecimal notation) where the driver for the device is stored.
• I/O Range: A memory address (again, in hexadecimal notation) set aside for the transfer of data to and from this device.
• IRQ (Interrupt Request): A request line for this device to signal to the CPU that it needs attention.
• DMA (Direct Memory Access) Channel: A line through which the device can bypass the CPU and interact directly with RAM. Not many devices use this anymore. You might still see it allocated for a keyboard or a sound card.

You can also view resource assignments as a list, rather than by individual devices. Follow these steps: From Device Manager,

1. Select View > Resources By Type.
2. Click the plus sign next to Direct memory access (DMA). The DMA channels that are currently in use appear, as shown below. Notice that the floppy drive requires DMA channel 2.
   
   DMA assignments.
3. Click the plus sign next to Interrupt request (IRQ). A list of the IRQs appears, along with the assignments to various devices, as shown in the next figure .
   
   IRQ assignments.