How to View and Configure Hardware Profiles in Windows 10

A hardware profile is a collection of configuration information about the hardware that is installed on your computer. Within a profile, you can enable or disable each piece of hardware (such as networking adapters, ports, monitors, and so on) or provide specific configuration information. You can have many hardware profiles on a computer and switch between different profiles when booting into Windows 10

When to Use Hardware Profiles in Windows 10

With Windows 10’s capability to reconfigure network settings when it detects a new network, hardware profiles are not as important as they used to be, and it is likely that you will never need to use them. Nonetheless, hardware profiles are still used, and you should understand how to create and configure them.

Hardware profiles are useful when you have one or more hardware devices that you want to disable sometimes and enable other times. Rather than enabling and disabling the devices using Device Manager each time you start Windows, you can create hardware profiles in which the devices are enabled or disabled, and then just choose the correct hardware profile during startup.

This functionality is particularly useful when you have an older portable computer that does not support hot docking (the capability for Windows 10 to automatically determine whether the portable computer is docked and reconfigure devices appropriately).

How to Create a Hardware Profile in Windows 10

Hardware profiles provide a way to configure a single computer for different situations. Within a profile, you can enable or disable specific hardware devices and configure those devices differently. As an example, assume that you have a user with a portable computer. When he is at home, the computer is connected to an external monitor, key~ board, mouse, and printer. When the user takes the computer away from home, none of these devices is connected. You could set his computer up with two hardware profiles: one in which those devices were enabled, and one in which they were disabled.

Whenever the computer starts, the user would choose the hardware profile to use, preventing him from having to make configuration changes or be notified of missing devices.

By default, Windows creates one hardware profile named Profile 1 during installation. To create an additional hardware profile, perform the following steps:

 Control Panel > System Click on the Hardware Profiles Tab
View Available hardware profiles
Select an existing hardware profile and click Copy
Rename this new hardware profile to a new name (e.g. Wireless)
Now you have more than one hardware profile to boot up in.
Reboot your PC and select this new hardware profile.
In this new hardware profile, go to Control Panel -System and click on Device Manager.

Select the hardware devices that you want to disable, such as LAN adapters, Infrared port, by going into Properties and selecting Disable in this Hardware Profile only . Doing this will only affect the selected hardware device in this particular profile that this PC has booted up in.

How to Manage Hardware Profiles

After you have created a profile, you can control generally how Windows 10 treats profiles by using the same Hardware Profiles dialog box you used to create the profile. (Open the System Properties dialog box, switch to the Hardware tab, and then click the Hardware Profiles button to access the dialog box.) First, you can specify how Windows uses hardware profiles during startup. You havethe following options: Have Windows wait until you select a hardware profile before it continues booting. Have Windows automatically select the first hardware profile in the list and continue booting after a specified amount of time. If you select this option, you can specify how long Windows should wait before going on without you. The defaultis 30 seconds.

You also can specify the order in which hardware profiles appear in the list during startup. The order is important, mostly because it is the first profile on the list that Windows will boot if you configure Windows to select a profile automatically. Select any profile on the list and use the up or down buttons on the right to move the profile around.

How to Configure Hardware Settings in a Profile

After you have created the necessary profiles and configured Windows to display and start them the correct way, the next step is to configure hardware settings for each profile. To configure hardware for a profile, you must start the computer by using that profile. After you have started Windows by using a profile, use Device Manager to enable, disable, and configure individual devices. The settings you make will affect the currently loaded profile.
The only tricky part of setting up hardware devices in profiles is actually remembering Which profile you are currently using because neither Device Manager nor a device's Properties dialog box provides information on the current profile. You can always switch back to the System Properties dialog box and open the Hardware Profiles window to determine your current profile.

How to Select a Hardware Profile During Startup

If there are two or more profiles in the Available Hardware Profiles list, Windows 10 prompts the user to make a selection during Startup. You can configure how long the computer waits before starting the default configuration. To adjust this time delay, click the Select The First Profile Listed If I Don’t Select A Profile option, and then specify the number of seconds in the Seconds text box within the Hardware Profiles Selection group. You can configure Windows 10 to start the default profile by setting the number of seconds to 0. To override the default during Startup, press SPACEBAR during the system prompt. You can also select the Wait Until I Select A Hardware Profile option to have Windows 10 wait for you to select a proftle.