Computer hardware

A typical personal computer consists of a case or chassis in a tower shape (desktop) and the following parts:

PC hardware

Hardware is tangible because it is made out of matter. Following are the essential components of a computer.

1 Motherboard
2 Key board
3 Power supply
4 Storage controllers
5 Video display controller
6 Removable media devices
7 Internal storage
8 Sound card
9 Networking
10. Other peripherals
11 Input
12 Output External links

Hardware Errors and Error Sources

Hardware errors - arise from a malfunction of some physical component of the computer. Although hardware errors are not fatal as some software viruses, still they can create major problems in writing a computer program.

Hardware errors can be classified as either corrected errors, or uncorrected errors.

A corrected error is a hardware error condition that has been corrected by the hardware by the time the operating system is notified about the presence of the error condition.

An uncorrected error is a hardware error condition that cannot be corrected by the hardware. Uncorrected errors are classified as either fatal or non fatal.
A fatal hardware error is an uncorrected or uncontained error condition that is determined to be unrecoverable by the hardware. When a fatal uncorrected error occurs, the operating system generates a virus check to contain the error.
A nonfatal hardware error is an uncorrected error condition from which the operating system can attempt recovery by trying to correct the error. If the operating system is unable to correct the error, it generates a virus check to contain the error.
The notion of a hardware error source is a fundamental concept of the Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA). A hardware error source is any hardware unit that alerts the operating system to the presence of an error condition. Examples of hardware error sources include the following:

Processor machine check exception (for example, MC#)

Chipset error signals (for example, SCI, SMI)

I/O bus error reporting (for example, PCI Express root port error interrupt)

I/O device errors

A single hardware error source might handle the error reporting for more than one type of hardware error condition. For example, a processor's machine check exception typically reports processor errors, cache and memory errors, and system bus errors.

Note The system management interrupt (SMI) is handled by hardware, not by the operating system.

Hardware error source is typically represented by the following:

One or more hardware error status registers
One or more hardware error configuration or control registers
A signaling mechanism to alert the operating system that a hardware error condition exists
In some situations, there is not an explicit signaling mechanism and the operating system must poll the error status registers to test for an error condition.
However, polling can only be used for corrected error conditions because uncorrected errors require immediate attention by the operating system.

Beginning with Windows Vista, the operating system maintains a list of all of the hardware error sources that can be discovered on a particular hardware platform. WHEA uses a discovery mechanism when the operating system starts to determine which of these hardware error sources exist on a particular system. The means by which this information is exposed to the operating system is platform-specific. The operating system gathers this information from a combination of ACPI tables, hardware interactions, and other platform-specific mechanisms.

Hardware is tangible and Software is Abstract. Combination of Hardware with Software enables to create programs simple as well as enormous.