Powerquest Corporation

Other

Eric J Ruff

Robert S Raymond

Scot Llewelyn

John W Ogilvie

Niel Orcutt

Russell J Marsh

Andy Vincent Lawrence

Blaine S Dennis

Flexible high-speed generation and formatting of application-specified strings in floating point and related formats is available through table-based base conversion which may be integrated with custom formatting, and through printf-style functionality based on separate control string parsing and specialized format command sequence execution.

Formatting floating point numbers

Base64 encoding and decoding advances are characterized. Some embodiments rely on only a single bit shifting operation; some have no reliance on bit-shifting. Some access data source bytes with multi-byte reads, and use those data source bytes as indexes into an encoding lookup table. Some use a table with four quadrants, each of which contains a copy of the same 64 encoding values. Some use a negative value as both a counter and an index. Some exclude BSWAP instructions even with a little-endian processor. Some partition a data source into N partitions, which are then encoded or decoded concurrently. In some, partition length is based on expected processor performance. Unrolled loops, exemplary assembly language code and coding choices, division using MagicNumber multiplication, terminal null addition, encoding/decoding applications, and other examples are also presented.

Improvements for Base64 encoding and decoding

Methods and systems are provided for detecting viruses in a computer system without relying on possibly infected system software or a possibly infected standard BIOS. The invention uses a separate BIOS designed specifically for virus detection and removal. This trusted BIOS is tailored to the controller hardware. The invention can detect viruses by detecting inconsistencies between results returned by the standard BIOS and results obtained using the trusted BIOS. The invention may also provide a virus remover. The virus remover relocates facade structures to their proper location, reconstructs boot sectors and Master Boot Records, and otherwise removes viruses.

Computer virus detection and removal

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture are provided for manipulating partitions while imaging them to another disk on the same or another computer. By integrating partition manipulations with imaging, the invention reduces data movement. Rather than resizing a source partition in place and then imaging the resized source partition, for instance, one embodiment of the invention leaves the source partition intact and performs resizing on-the-fly by manipulating a memory-resident copy of the source partition's file system structures and then copying the modified structures and corresponding portions of the source user data to the target location. In addition to partition resizing, on-the-fly manipulations possible with the invention include cluster resizing, defragmentation, file relocation, and others. Novel image file formats suitable for on-the-fly manipulations are also described.

Computer partition manipulation during imaging

A method allows manipulation of disk partitions defined by an IBM-compatible partition table. The disk partitions may be located on one or more disks attached to one or more disk drives. Each partition has an associated file system type, such as FAT or HPFS. An interrupted manipulation may be resumed at a point in the progress of the manipulation near the point of interruption. Available manipulations include verifying the integrity of a partition's file system structures; displaying information about a partition; moving a partition to a different location; resizing a partition; and converting a partition from one file system to another file system. The resizing step is illustrated with particular reference to HPFS file systems and FAT file systems. The details required to perform these manipulations are attended to by an implementing program that requires only general direction from a user. Thus, the present invention provides a method that allows users who are unfamiliar with technical intricacies to easily manipulate IBM-compatible disk partitions, including extended partitions and logical partitions.

Manipulating disk partitions between disks

Methods and systems are provided for copying, moving, and resizing disk partitions that contain advanced file systems. Unlike the conventional approach that relies on FDISK and FORMAT, the invention does not destroy user data by wiping the partition clean after data is copied to tape or other intermediate storage. Advanced file system features, including features such as relocatable file system structures, volume sets, suballocation, and database paradigm structures not found in many FAT file systems, are handled by the invention during 'in place' partition manipulation.

Manipulation of partitions holding advanced file systems

Methods, systems, articles of manufacture, and signal formats are provided for transferring disk images from a transmitting computer to one or more downloading computers. The transfer is done in a manner that allows a technician to start the download to one computer while preparing a second computer for downloading or shutting down a third computer after it has finished downloading the disk image. The computers need not wait for the beginning of a data stream but can instead join the download at specified points within the data stream. This reduces the time spent waiting to begin the download, particularly when the disk image being transferred is large. Compression and connection selection may be performed in response to changes in network performance. Image file packing and error management techniques may also be used, as well as on-the-fly file system instance manipulations.

One-to-many disk imaging transfer over a network

A method allows non-destructive manipulation of disk partitions defined by an IBM-compatible partition table. The disk partitions may be located on one or more disks attached to one or more disk drives. Each partition has an associated file system type. An interrupted manipulation may be resumed at a point in the progress of the manipulation near the point of interruption. Available manipulations include verifying the integrity of a partition's file system structures; displaying information about a partition; moving a partition to a different location; resizing a partition; and resizing the file system clusters. The resizing steps are illustrated with particular reference to file systems which use a file allocation table. The details required to perform these manipulations are attended to by an implementing program that requires only general direction from a user. Thus, the present invention provides a method that allows users who are unfamiliar with technical intricacies to easily manipulate IBM-compatible disk partitions, including extended partitions and logical partitions.

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Lehi, UT, United States of America

Eric J Ruff