Dell Products Inc.

Jagadish Babu Jonnada

Ibrahim Sayyed

Adolfo Sandor Montero

Laxmi Lavanya Medicherla

Nikhil Manohar Vichare

Anand Prakash Joshi

Shekar Babu Suryanarayana

Balasingh Ponraj Samuel

Frank Quintanilla, Iii

Phanindra Talasila

An information handling system may include at least one processor and a computer-readable medium having instructions thereon that are executable by the at least one processor for: prior to initialization of an operating system, executing a first-party pre-boot firmware application, wherein the first-party pre-boot firmware application is configured to provide a graphics-mode interface; executing a third-party pre-boot firmware application, wherein the third-party pre-boot firmware application includes a visual forms representation (VFR); parsing, by the first-party pre-boot firmware application, the VFR; and displaying, by the graphics-mode user interface, a graphical user interface for the third-party pre-boot firmware application.

System context-controlled third-party firmware display and configuration by parsing pre-boot firmware application based on virtual forms representation (VFR)

An information handling system may include at least one processor and a computer-readable medium having instructions thereon that are executable by the at least one processor. The instructions may be executable for: prior to initialization of an operating system, executing a first-party pre-boot firmware application, wherein the first-party pre-boot firmware application is configured to provide system-level context information; executing a third-party pre-boot firmware application, wherein the third-party pre-boot firmware application is configured to receive the system-level context information from the first-party pre-boot firmware application; and displaying a user interface for the third-party pre-boot firmware application, wherein at least one element of the user interface is based on the system-level context information.

System context-aware third party firmware safe assurance configuration

An operating system (OS) software service detects an accessibility change event and takes a snapshot of the accessibility settings before sending and receiving memory-mapped input/output (MMIO) commands with an embedded controller (EC) to establish trust using existing security hardening methods. The software service may send an MMIO command that includes the profile as a payload to the EC. The EC extracts the profile payload and saves it to an NVRAM variable before signaling a basic input/output system (BIOS) during early boot of an available accessibility profile. The EC publishes an accessibility profile presence to a BIOS pre-EFI initialization (PEI) layer, which sends a command to the EC to return the response. The BIOS creates a new hand off block (HOB) command indicative of the accessibility profile and passes this to an early Driver Execution Environment (DXE) stage, which reads the HOB data and locates the accessibility layer within a serial peripheral interface (SPI) firmware volume and loads into memory. This extracted profile information is passed onto the accessibility layer, which applies the profile data to user interface (UI) control attributes.

Systems and methods providing seamless accessibility across pre-boot and runtime environments

An information handling system may include a processor, a battery configured to provide electrical energy to components of the information handling system, and a basic input/output system (BIOS) communicatively coupled to the processor and embodied by executable instructions embodied in non-transitory computer readable media, the instructions configured to, when executed by the processor, in response to one of execution of a BIOS managed operation or a request for execution of the BIOS managed operation: determine an energy requirement for execution of the BIOS managed operation; determine an energy capacity of the battery; determine if the energy capacity is sufficient to satisfy the energy requirement; and limit one or more features of the BIOS managed operation in response to the energy capacity being insufficient to satisfy the energy requirement.

Systems and methods for battery context-aware limiting of bios managed operations

An information handling system includes an embedded controller configured to transmit an error code to a pre-extensible firmware interface initialization module. A graphics font manager may generate a glyphs database during a boot process. If the error code is associated with a no power-on self-test, no video condition, then the pre-extensible firmware interface initialization module may retrieve information associated with the error code transmitted by the embedded controller, and locate the glyphs database generated by the graphics font manager from the non-volatile storage device.

Enriched pre-extensible firmware interface initialization graphics

An information handling system may include a processor, a display device communicatively coupled to the processor, and a basic input/output system (BIOS) communicatively coupled to the processor and configured to cause the processor to, during a pre-boot environment of the information handling system, collect contextual information regarding the information handling system, based on the contextual information, determine whether to enable soft keyboard functionality, and responsive to a determination to enable soft keyboard functionality, cause display of soft keyboard functionality to the display device.

Systems and methods for automating pre-boot soft keyboard behavior based on system context

An information handling system may include at least one processor, a physical storage resource, and a non-volatile memory other than the physical storage resource. The at least one processor may be configured to execute instructions for: storing learned profile data at the physical storage resource; in response to detection of a catastrophic event, copying the learned profile data from the physical storage resource to the non-volatile memory; and subsequent to a remediation event for the catastrophic event, restoring the learned profile data from the non-volatile memory.

Persistence of learned profiles

A method may include during a Pre-Extensible Firmware Interface Initialization phase of a BIOS, receiving a mailbox command from a management controller of an information handling system, the mailbox command including information regarding a driver image stored in computer-readable media associated with the BIOS, the information including uniquely-identifying information for the driver image. The method may also include, during a Driver Execution Environment phase of the BIOS, locating the driver image stored in the computer-readable media, verifying the driver image based on the information from the mailbox command, extracting the driver image from the computer-readable media in response to verifying the driver image, and causing a driver stored within the driver image to load and execute during BIOS execution.

Systems and methods for basic input/output system driver offline protocol

A BIOS of an information may transmit information regarding events detected by the BIOS to an OS of an information handling system for logging in an OS event log. A BIOS of an information handling system may detect an event and may log information regarding the event in a memory of an information handling system. An OS of the information handling system may retrieve at least a portion of the information regarding the event from the event log and may add at least a portion of the retrieved information to an OS event viewer.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Jagadish Babu Jonnada