Automated recovery of unbootable systems

• US 7,734,945 B1
• Filed: 04/29/2005
• Issued: 06/08/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/29/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Meng, Yi, Levidow, Bjorn B.
• Primary Examiner(s): Baderman; Scott T
• Assistant Examiner(s): Leibovich; Yair
• Application Number:
  US11/117,846
• Time in Patent Office: 1,866 Days
• Field of Search: 714/48
• US Class Current: 714/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/079 Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis in a hardware test environment G06F11/22; in a software test environment G06F11/36
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40

Abstract

Provided is a system to automatically recover a computer system after a failed attempt, or failed attempts, to boot a target operating system on the computer system.

Claims

1. A computer-storage medium having computer executable instructions for performing steps of recovering from boot failure of a target operating system on a computer system comprising:

determining an occurrence of the boot failure;

launching a recovery environment, the recovery environment including a host operating system and a diagnostic and recovery system (DRS) executing under the host operating system, wherein the DRS includes a diagnostic engine and a decision and recovery engine, and wherein the host operating system is separate from the target operating system;

identifying, by the diagnostic engine, a root cause of the boot failure, including;

accessing a plurality of diagnostic tools, each of which diagnoses a different component of a boot process of the target operating system,

obtaining diagnostic data corresponding to the boot failure from the plurality of diagnostic tools,

accessing a diagnostic mapping table, the diagnostic mapping table including a mapping of various diagnostic data to various root cause data, and

determining the root cause of the boot failure based on the diagnostic mapping table;

in response to the identification of the root cause, identifying, by the decision and recovery engine, a plurality of recovery actions associated with the root cause, including;

accessing a recovery table, the recovery table including a mapping of various root causes to various recovery actions, and

determining, via the recovery table, a plurality of probable recovery actions based on the root cause wherein the probable recovery actions are actions that are likely to correct the root cause of the boot failure;

creating a priority of the probable recovery actions based on the likelihood of correcting the root problem;

displaying the probable recovery action in priority order;

allowing a selection of probable recovery actions to be executed; and

sequentially and separately executing each of the selected probable recovery actions, starting with a highest priority probable recovery, until the computer system is able to boot successfully.

2. The computer-storage medium of claim 1, the computer readable medium having further executable instructions for performing steps of

recovering from the boot failure comprising:

rebooting the computer system;

determining the occurrence of a reboot failure; and

identifying another recovery action associated with the root cause.

3. The computer-storage medium of claim 1, the computer readable medium having further executable instructions for performing steps of recovering from the boot failure comprising:

rebooting the computer system;

determining the occurrence of a reboot failure; and

identifying another root cause of the boot failure.

4. The computer-storage medium of claim 1, having further executable instructions comprising diagnosing pre-operating system boot processes for the root cause.

5. The computer-storage medium of claim 4 having further executable instructions for diagnosing the pre-operating boot processes for the root cause comprising:

examining partition table data for a system volume storing the target operating system; and

examining boot initiation data for the system volume.

6. The computer-storage medium of claim 1, having further executable instructions comprising diagnosing operating system boot processes for the root cause.

7. The computer-storage medium of claim 6 having further executable instructions for diagnosing the operating system boot processes comprising examining logged data from operating system boot processes.

8. A computing apparatus, comprising:

a display unit that is capable of generating video images;

an input device; and

a processing apparatus operatively coupled to said display unit and said input device, said processing apparatus comprising a processor and a memory operatively coupled to said processor, said processing apparatus being programmed to;

detect a boot failure corresponding to a target operating system of the computing apparatus;

launch a recovery environment, the recovery environment including a host operating system and a diagnostic and recovery system (DRS) executing under the host operating system, wherein the DRS includes a diagnostic engine and a decision and recovery engine, and wherein the host operating system is separate from the target operating system;

via the diagnostic engine of the DRS, diagnose a boot process of the computing apparatus to identify a root cause of the boot failure, including;

accessing a plurality of diagnostic tools, each of which diagnoses a different component of the boot process,

obtaining diagnostic data corresponding to the boot failure from the plurality of diagnostic tools,

accessing a diagnostic mapping table, the diagnostic mapping table including a mapping of various diagnostic data to various root cause data, and

determining the root cause of the boot failure based on the diagnostic mapping table;

in response to the identification of the root cause, identify, via the decision and recovery engine of the DRS, a plurality of recovery actions associated with the root cause, including;

accessing a recovery table, the recovery table including a mapping of various root causes to various recovery tools, and

determining, via the recovery table, a plurality of probable recovery actions corresponding to a subset of the various recovery tools, the determining based on the root cause and wherein the probable recovery actions are actions that are likely to correct the root cause of the boot failure;

create a priority of the probable recovery actions based on the likelihood of correcting the root problem;

display the probable recovery action in priority order;

allow a selection of probable recovery actions to be executed; and

sequentially and separately execute each of the selected probable recovery actions, starting with a highest priority probable recovery action, until the computer system is able to boot successfully.

9. The computing apparatus of claim 8, further comprising a system volume storing the target operating system and a boot volume storing the host operating system.

10. The computing apparatus of claim 9, further comprising a partitionable computer storage medium having a first partition as the system volume and a second partition as the boot volume.

11. The computing apparatus of claim 8, wherein said processing apparatus is programmed to diagnose pre-operating system boot processes of the computing apparatus to identify the root cause.

12. The computing apparatus of claim 8, wherein said processing apparatus is programmed to diagnose operating system boot processes of the computing apparatus to identify the root cause.

13. A method of recovering a computer system from a boot failure comprising:

determining an occurrence of the boot failure corresponding to a target operating system of the computer system;

launching a recovery environment, the recovery environment including a host operating system and a diagnostic and recovery system (DRS) executing under the host operating system, wherein the DRS includes a diagnostic engine and a decision and recovery engine, and wherein the host operating system is separate from the target operating system;

identifying, by the diagnostic engine of the DRS, a root cause of the boot failure, including;

accessing a plurality of diagnostic tools, each of which diagnoses a different component of a boot process of the target operating system, obtaining diagnostic data corresponding to the boot failure from the plurality of diagnostic tools, accessing a diagnostic mapping table, the diagnostic mapping table including a mapping of various diagnostic data to various root cause data, and determining the root cause of the boot failure based on the diagnostic mapping table;

in response to the identification of the root cause, identifying, by the decision and recovery engine of the DRS, a plurality of recovery actions associated with the root cause, including;

accessing a recovery table, the recovery table including a mapping of various root causes to various recovery actions, and determining, via the recovery table, a plurality of probable recovery actions based on the root cause, wherein the plurality of probable recovery actions attempt to correct a failure in storage of data related to the root cause of the boot failure and, wherein the plurality of probable recovery actions are actions that are likely to correct the root cause of the boot failure;

creating a priority of the probable recovery actions based on the likelihood of correcting the root problem;

displaying the probable recovery action in priority order;

allowing a selection of probable recovery actions to be executed; and

sequentially and separately executing each of the selected probable recovery actions, starting with a highest priority probable recovery action, until the computer system is able to boot successfully.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

diagnosing a pre-operating system boot process of the computer system to identify the root cause; and

in response to the diagnosing the pre-operating system boot process, diagnosing an operating-system boot process to identify the root cause.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

logging diagnostic and recovery data; and

communicating the logged diagnostic and recovery data to a remote user.