Plug and Play was developed by Intel^® and Microsoft^® and was designed to simplify the installation of new hardware. Windows 95 was the first operating system to include Plug and Play technology.

Plug and play compatible devices can communicate with the operating system allowing automated configuration, such as associated I/O ports and IRQ channels.

When a plug and play device is first installed/connected and the machine re-booted (unless the device is USB, which requires no restart), the operating system will acknowledge the presence of the new hardware and prompt you for the hardware installation disk. Then after following a few simple steps, the device drivers will be automatically installed.

These days, most new hardware devices are plug and play compatible.

Back to Computer Dictionary