Boot method of a system whose system BIOS has been disabled

• US 20020066009A1
• Filed: 06/06/2001
• Published: 05/30/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 11/29/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Getac Technology Company Limited (MiTAC Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: MiTAC International Corporation (MiTAC Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Tung, Chung-Chih
• Granted Patent: US 6,795,916 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1433 during software upgrading

Abstract

A novel boot method for a system, whose system BIOS has been disabled by erroneous microcode input as the result of inadvertent miscoding or malicious intent. The keyboard BIOS of the system is utilized in the present invention. If the CPU of the computer crashes during a microcode update, the system notes the error (setting a number of flags) and restarts the computer. The restarted system will not perform the microcode update, but goes straight to the normal BIOS activation, avoiding the crash problem. To fix the problem, users need only request the correct microcode from CPU retailers to amend the errors in the BIOS.

Claims

1. A boot method for a system;

the boot method allows the system to be rebooted in the event that the system BIOS has been disabled by erroneous microcode input as the result of inadvertent miscoding or malicious intent;

the boot method comprises the following steps;

after activation, the system checks if it is necessary to update the microcode and notifies the keyboard BIOS of the needed update;

the keyboard BIOS waits for a first predetermined period after the update of the microcode commences, if an updated signal is not received, the keyboard BIOS sets a fail flag, shuts down the system and, after a second predetermined period, reboots the system.

2. The method in claim 1, wherein, if the fail flag has already been set, the system does not update the microcode after restarting, and sets an non-update flag to allow the system to perform normal BIOS activation.

3. The method in claim 2, wherein if the non-update flag has already been set, the system starts the BIOS activation procedure after the computer is activated;

otherwise, the system confirms whether the update should commence according to the fail flag settings.

4. The method in claim 1, wherein if the keyboard BIOS receives the updated signal after the first predetermined period, the keyboard clears the fail flag to allow the system to complete the BIOS activation.

5. The method in claim 2, wherein the system sets the non-update flag in the system CMOS.

6. The method in claim 2, wherein the system sets the fail flag in the keyboard BIOS.

7. The method in claim 2, wherein the non-update flag is cleared after the damaged system BIOS code is rewritten.