How to determine hardware abstraction layer in Windows Server 2008

halwindows-server-2008

I'm investigating a bug which only seems to be reproducable on some single processor machines. I want to know if this is related to the HAL.

Prior to Server 2008, it was possible to select a specific HAL .dll using device manager as described here – Halapic.dll is uniprocessor and Halmps.dll multi.

In Server 2008, I can see three .dlls listed under drivers for my computer. The naming convention suggests that 2008 always has drivers for standard PC, uniproc pc and multiproc pc.

My question is this: Does Server 2008 always use a uniproc HAL on a machine with a single CPU? Additionally, is there a way to determine which HAL you use, or to force use of a particular HAL?

Thanks

Best Answer

I believe only the ACPI HAL ships with Windows Server 2008. Mark Russinovich mentioned something about it when discussing the changes to the kernel. Geoff Chappell has some great history on the HALs.

Related Solutions

Powershell – How to determine 32 or 64 bit version of Windows Server 2008 using Powershell

Or try this:

PS C:\Users\jeffh> $os=Get-WMIObject win32_operatingsystem
PS C:\Users\jeffh> $os.OSArchitecture
64-bit

Found at: http://msgoodies.blogspot.com/2008/05/is-this-powershell-session-32-bit-or-64.html

What’s the difference between Windows Server 2008, 2008 SP2 and 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 SP2 are the same operating system, just at a different service pack level (Windows Server 2008 started at the SP1 level because it was released quite a bit after Windows Vista and SP1 was already out).

Windows Server 2008 R2 is the server release of Windows 7, so it's version 6.1 of the O.S.; it introduces quite a lot of new features, because it's actually a new release of the system. This is a good place to start: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/whats-new.aspx.

There are also differences at the GUI level, because WS2008R2 uses the same new GUI introduced with Windows 7 (new taskbar, etc.).

Depending on what kind of applications you're developing, they may or may not encounter problems on different O.S. releases; you should definitely check MSDN.

The single most important point: Windows Server 2008 R2 exists only for 64-bit platforms, there's no x86 version anymore.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Powershell – How to determine 32 or 64 bit version of Windows Server 2008 using Powershell

What’s the difference between Windows Server 2008, 2008 SP2 and 2008 R2

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