Patent ID: 6519698
Filing Date: 2003-02-11
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A method that reduce an amount of time required to gather system configuration information during an initialization process within a computer system, comprising:checking a state of a chassis intrusion detection circuit within the computer system to determine whether a chassis of the computer system has been opened; if the chassis intrusion detection circuit indicates that the chassis has been opened, performing a normal initialization operation that gathers system configuration information by communicating directly with a plurality of computer system components to determine a state of the plurality of computer system components, configuring the devices with, the system configuration information, and saving the system configuration information in a nonvolatile storage device; and if the chassis intrusion detection circuit indicates that the chassis has not been opened, performing an abbreviated initialization operation that retrieves the system configuration information from the nonvolatile storage device without having to communicate directly with the plurality of computer system components, and configuring the devices with the system configuration information; wherein the nonvolatile storage device resides within a microprocessor chip in the computer system.