Abstract: A single, global resource manager assigns system resources to all hardware devices in the computer system, including hardware devices that are both "plug and play" software programmable, hardware devices that are manually-configurable and the system motherboard. The resource manager includes a conflict resolver module which resolves conflicts which arise in the computer system over the allocation of system resources. Such system resources include, but are not limited to, memory ranges, input-output (I/O) register ranges, interrupt request lines and direct memory access (DMA) channels. Resource requirements for each device are obtained by recognizer objects which are customized versions of standardized objects that are part of the resource resolver framework and all resource requirements are encapsulated in resource usage objects which have a standard interface that works with the global resource resolver.