Computer configuration

With a configuration ( settings ) refers to a specific adjustment programs or hardware components of a computer to the existing system, and the system itself in its compilation. In addition to the Installation ( Initial, english setup), the term also includes the selectable settings (default, also options) of the operating parameters.

Under a hardware configuration is defined as a specific combination of components of a PC. Thus, there is a configuration example, from a certain motherboard, processor type, a certain graphics card and a specific hard drive. You can then configure the computer system software side so that it prints to a specific printer by installing a device driver, for example.

Main problem of software- configuration is that all the processes in principle " forget" their configuration when they are completed, including all electronic devices when they are turned off. Therefore, there are a myriad of mechanisms to save the configuration.

• This applies for example for booting the computer, that is why also boot (boot english for, shoelace ' in the sense to pull your own shoelace from the bottom '): Although the device non-volatile memory configurations can read, but must know how it reads this memory. Therefore, the boot is always a process in which one continues to operate from one configuration to the next. The initial store that reads a standard desktop, the BIOS (Basic In / Out), which is placed in its own small, battery -powered memory (usually an EPROM, modern appliances use a firmware based on flash memory ). There can be read, in which storage areas of the driver and its settings are available for the boot disk so that where the boot sector of a hard disk can be found, where the operating system is to be read, and so on.
• The problem is made at a higher level on, the operating system needs its configuration read (on Windows systems for instance from the registry, with UNIX based from the configuration folders to the root directory ), and application software required for start Settings under Windows also in the registry, or but are in program-specific initialization files or databases.

Become common, typical basic configurations (default configuration, the default), which are useful for the general operation in general. Then a user can building on own system configurations and settings ( User Configuration ), a process which, by analogy to fine-tune old radio receivers tune (actually, tuning a musical instrument '), German about turning to the little screw ' is called. A default configuration to which you go back if the settings cause problems ( misconfiguration ), is called fail-safe configuration ( fail-safe configuration ').

The configuration is a central aspect of IT security, it indicates the Federal Office for Security in Information Technology in the Management Report 2005 that the complex unintentional misconfiguration / human error to about 30 % of the type of security breach or attack on industrial IT systems is involved, while exploiting a vulnerability in the operating system or the software owns just under 60 % (which term, vulnerability 'real software bugs as well as deficient includes setup configuration).