Windows Hardware Error Architecture
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Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA) is a hardware error handling framework introduced for Microsoft Windows with Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 as a successor to Machine Check Architecture (MCA) on previous versions of Windows.[1] WHEA consists of several software components that interact with the hardware and firmware of a given platform to handle and notify regarding hardware error conditions.[2] Collectively, these components provide: a generic means of discovering errors, a common error report format for those errors, a way of preserving error records, and an error event model based on Event Tracing for Windows (ETW).[3]
WHEA allows third-party software to interact with the operating system and react to certain hardware events. For example, when a new CPU is added to a running system—a Windows Server feature known as Dynamic Hardware Partitioning—the hardware error component stack is notified that a new processor was installed.
WHEA builds on existing hardware error reporting mechanisms, including PCI Express Advanced Error Reporting and firmware-provided interfaces such as the ACPI Platform Error Interface (APEI), introduced in ACPI 5.0. On Linux systems, APEI is implemented directly within the kernel[4], whereas Windows integrates APEI error sources through WHEA.[5]
See also
- Machine-check exception (MCE)
- Reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS)
- RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability and safety)
- High availability (HA)
- Blue screen of death
References
- ↑ "Windows Hardware Error Architecture (WHEA) design guide". Sep 15, 2016. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/whea/.
- ↑ "Components of the Windows Hardware Error Architecture". Sep 15, 2016. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/whea/components-of-the-windows-hardware-error-architecture.
- ↑ "Introduction to the Windows Hardware Error Architecture". Sep 15, 2016. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/whea/introduction-to-the-windows-hardware-error-architecture.
- ↑ "APEI Error INJection". https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/firmware-guide/acpi/apei/einj.html.
- ↑ "Windows Hardware Error Architecture Definitions" (in en-us). Sep 15, 2016. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/whea/windows-hardware-error-architecture-definitions.
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