The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 27, 2010
Filed:
Jul. 11, 2006
Min Eig Lee, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Chih-yi Chen, San Jose, CA (US);
Huynh Duc Mai, Milpitas, CA (US);
Michael A. Sebrée, Mountain View, CA (US);
Pradeep Kalra, San Jose, CA (US);
Min Eig Lee, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Chih-Yi Chen, San Jose, CA (US);
Huynh Duc Mai, Milpitas, CA (US);
Michael A. Sebrée, Mountain View, CA (US);
Pradeep Kalra, San Jose, CA (US);
Network Appliance, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
An IBM PC compatible processing system typically has a BIOS installed as system firmware. During a boot process of the processing system, the BIOS loads a boot loader from one of the boot media, i.e., hard drives, floppy disks, CDs, USB flash memories, taps, etc. and passes control of the boot loader, the boot loader then loads an OS from the boot media. The present invention takes advantage of the higher reliability and availability provided by the system flash memory and stores a boot loader as system firmware in the system flash memory. Further, it provides changes in the BIOS boot process to load the boot loader from system memory, the ROM, for example, without relying on boot media. With this new process, the boot loader can be loaded even when the boot media is corrupt, defective or un-initialized.