PC Fundamentals > Hardware Management

WHEA - Windows Hardware Error Architecture

Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA) provides a common infrastructure for handling hardware errors on Windows platforms. WHEA is intended to reduce mean-time-to-recovery for fatal hardware errors through richer error reporting and to reduce system crashes related to hardware errors through effective operating system hardware error recovery and health monitoring. WHEA enables the Windows operating system to effectively utilize existing and future hardware error standards, such as the Itanium Machine Check Architecture (MCA) and PCI Express Advance Error Reporting (AER).

WHEA provides:

•

A generic error source discovery mechanism

•

A common hardware error record format and error handling flow

•

A persistence mechanism for preserving error records

•

A hardware error eventing model based on Event Tracing for Windows (ETW)

The initial implementation of WHEA focuses on platform hardware devices, including processor, memory, cache, and system interconnects such as PCI, PCI-X, and PCI Express. Peripheral device errors remain under the control of their respective device drivers.

WHEA - Windows Hardware Error Architecture
White PaperWindows Hardware Error Architecture
White PaperWindows Hardware Error Architecture ACPI Table Specification
Microsoft.comWHEA Management Applications
Microsoft.comWindows Hardware Error Architecture in WDK Documentation

WHEA - WinHEC 2007
Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt)WHEA Platform Implementation [WinHEC 2007; 1.1 MB]
Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt)WHEA Systems Design and Implementation [WinHEC 2007; 1.2 MB]
Windows MultimediaWHEA Systems Design and Implementation [WinHEC 2007; Streaming media]

WHEA - WinHEC 2006
Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt)Developing for the Windows Hardware Error Architecture [WinHEC 2006; 464 KB]