Patent ID: 6336152
Filing Date: 2002-01-01
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
For a system for configuring a computer, said computer characterized by at least one system bus, a plurality of resources comprising memory addresses, direct memory access channels, interrupts, and input/output ports, and devices connected to each system bus, each device associated with device information that uniquely identifies said corresponding device and defines usage requirements of said resources for said corresponding device,said configuring system, responsive to certain events causing an asynchronous change in the operating state of said computer, for configuring each device by collecting said device information from each memory storage device, for determining at least one possible logical device configuration based upon the collected device information, allocating said resources for each device in response to said device information, and loading a device driver for each device, wherein at least one of said devices is a network adapter including a plurality of layers associated with interfaces, said layers comprising at least one of protocols, redirectors, and servers, a method for automatically configuring said layers of each network adapter without manual intervention and without prior configuration information, in response to loading said device driver corresponding to said network adapter, comprising the steps, (a) identifying each layer associated with a particular one of said interfaces for said corresponding network adapter; (b) loading each identified layer; and (c) repeating steps (a)-(b) for each of the remaining ones of said interfaces.