Dell Products Inc.

Amit K Tiwari

Ibrahim Sayyed

Adolfo Sandor Montero

Anand Prakash Joshi

Frank Quintanilla, Iii

Ruhull Bhuiyan

Carl McAdams

Srikanth Krishnamurthy S

Systems and methods include an Information Handling System (IHS) that is adapted to address power state transition failures by an IHS. An Embedded Controller (EC) of the IHS detects a request for the IHS to transition to a low-power operating state, such as a modern standby power state. The EC monitors for progress of the IHS in transitioning to the low-power operating state. Based on the monitoring, the EC determines the SoC is preventing the transition by the IHS to the low-power operating state. The EC identifies and releases hardware resources of the IHS that are referenced by the SoC and that are preventing the transition of the IHS to the low-power operating state.

Diagnosing power state transition failures in a heterogeneous computing platform

Systems and methods include an Information Handling System (IHS) that is adapted to protect access to configurable settings of the IHS. Upon the IHS being powered, a UEFI boot sequence is initiated. During the boot sequence, a boot sequence notification is detected that indicates conditions required for booting an operating system of the IHS have been met. Further access to the NVRAM that stores UEFI variables is locked such that upon receiving a request for access to a UEFI variable stored in the NVRAM, the request for access to a UEFI variable is granted based on a listing of authorized applications.

Secure hardware access in a heterogeneous computing platform

Disclosed methods include initiating a system basic I/O system (BIOS) and, responsive to detecting an empty drive, accessing evaluating local BIOS telemetry data associated with installation of a new drive. Upon determining that the BIOS telemetry data a specified criteria, a long disk self-test (DST) and a short DST, may be performed. If the DSTs generate no hardware errors, hard drive service data including, for example, call log and service tag history associated with the information handling system, may be retrieved from a cloud backend to authorize an OS installation. Upon approving an OS installation, a service operating system (SOS) image may be retrieved from an OEM backend and a special key operable to cause a startup service of the SOS to boot to an OS installation flow may be accessed from a firmware volume in SPI flash to enable the SOS to initiate an OS installation flow.

BIOS-instrumented firmware state for hard drive repair/replace assurance

An information handling system includes a storage and an embedded controller. The storage stores context data associated with a standby mode for the information handling system. The embedded controller receives the context data from a host operating system of the information handling system. The context data includes data associated with a software deepest runtime identification platform state. The embedded controller further stores the context data in the storage. In response to a restart of the information handling system, the embedded controller determines a device driver that prevented the information handling system from exiting the standby mode based on the context data, and provides an identifier of the device driver a software service of the host operating system.

Embedded controller to enhance diagnosis and remediation of power state change failures

An information handling system may include a host system including at least one host processor and a basic input/output system (BIOS); and an embedded controller (EC) including an EC processor. In response to the information handling system receiving an instruction from a user to initiate a forced power off, the EC may be configured to: store diagnostic information indicating a state of the host system; and upon a subsequent boot of the host system, transmit information to the BIOS indicating the forced power off.

Detection and remediation of runtime crashes in heterogeneous operating environments

An information handling system may include a processor, a memory communicatively coupled to the processor, a communications port communicatively coupled to the processor, and a basic input/output system (BIOS) comprising boot firmware configured to be executed by the processor of the information handling system when the information handling system is booted and/or powered on, and configured to initialize information handling resources of the information handling system and/or initialize interoperation of the information handling system with other information handling systems, the BIOS further configured to: responsive to a failure to complete a phase of execution of the BIOS, create a virtual disk on the memory such that the virtual disk is mountable as a volume by a second information handling system coupled to the information handling system via the communications port, and store telemetry information relevant to the failure to the virtual disk.

Systems and methods for pre-operating system retrieval of telemetry in a no-post/no-video scenario

A method may include, in an operating system executing on an information handling system, obtaining information regarding basic input/output system (BIOS) configuration security controls, evaluating the BIOS configuration security controls to determine if the BIOS configuration security controls satisfy a standard for performing a BIOS-managed BIOS firmware update, and if the BIOS configuration security controls fail to satisfy the standard for performing the BIOS-managed BIOS firmware update, configuring the BIOS configuration security controls to enforce a secure BIOS update policy on a subsequent boot of the information handling system and triggering a warm reboot of the information handling system.

Systems and methods for safeguarding updates to a basic input/output system of an information handling system

If a critical event occurs during a boot process, an information handling system may analyze firmware associated with the critical event to determine whether the firmware is unified extensible firmware interface compliant. In response to determining that the firmware is not unified extensible firmware interface compliant, the system may retrieve a rule associated with the firmware, and apply one or more actions to the information handling system based on the rule.

Optimizing runtime system operation via pre-boot system analysis

A disclosed information handling system is configured to display a consistent logo or image throughout a platform initialization process. In a first-time boot, in a DXE phase, image information is read from firmware storage and processed for native resolution for a display panel and HOB information is saved to firmware volumes with Hand-Off Block (HOB) information. In subsequent iterations of the platform initialization process, the processed image is displayed early in a PEI phase and the HOB information is stored with the processed image. The image is displayed throughout the DXE and BDS phases of each subsequent platform initialization process and the display is consistent for different information handling systems and display panels.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Amit K Tiwari