Installing and Removing Hardware
Rob Tidrow, Jim Boyce, Jeffrey R. Shapiro · 2017
This chapter is about connecting, installing, and removing hardware. A typical computer consists of hardware, firmware, and software. This chapter discusses each of these components with a focus on installing and removing hardware in Windows 10. A device driver is a program that serves as an intermediary between a piece of hardware and an application or the operating system. For example, a display driver enables Windows 10 to communicate with and control the computer's display. Many modern hardware devices are hot-pluggable, which means user simply connect them to the computer and start using them. Hot-pluggable devices generally connect to the computer through Universal Serial Bus (USB), IEEE 1392, or PC Card. The chapter covers some general issues concerning hard disks. All these operations pose some risk of data loss and should be attempted only by people who understand the risks and are confident they have backups of all important data.