1. A computer system having a plurality of hardware components and an operating system that is configured for handling hardware errors from a hardware component, the operating system comprising a platform-independent error processing module and a platform-specific error handler, wherein: the platform-independent error processing module is configured to: receive notice of a hardware error from an error signal handler module that detects hardware errors from one or more hardware components; generate an error record corresponding to the hardware error, wherein the error record comprises a record header and a plurality of sections, and wherein at least one first section of the error record includes platform-independent error information available to the platform-independent error processing module; and request that a platform-specific error handler module augment the error record with additional error information that is available to the platform-specific error handler module but not available to the platform-independent error processing module; and the platform-specific error handler is configured to: perform platform-specific error handling functions at the direction of the platform-independent error processing module, wherein the platform-specific error handling functions comprise error recovery processing; augment at least one second section of the error record with platform-specific error information that is available to the platform-specific error handler module but not available to the platform-independent error processing module, wherein a section header of the at least one second section includes a flag indicating that the at least one second section includes platform-specific error information; and accept at least one plug-in module that is configured to: obtain additional platform-specific error data specific to at least one hardware component; perform additional platform-specific error handling functions comprising additional error recovery processing for the at least one hardware component associated with the at least one plug-in module; and augment the error record with additional error information that is available to the at least one plug-in module but not available to the platform-specific error handler module or the platform-independent error processing module.