Patent ID: 7430629

Claim:
A method comprising: emulating a Host Bus Adapter (HBA) in software to enable a communication of data packets between a computer and a secondary memory via a Network Interface Card (NIC) driver; disabling the MC driver in response to an anomaly in an Operating System (OS) in the computer, wherein the anomaly in the OS causes a first portion of the OS to be disabled and a second portion of the OS to remain operational; in response to the NIC driver being disabled due to the anomaly in the OS in the computer, transmitting a System Management Interrupt (SMI) signal from the software emulated HBA to a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) boot loader in a System Management Mode (SMM) BIOS, wherein the BIOS boot loader contains resident code for booting a target that provides access to the secondary memory; and in response to the BIOS boot loader receiving the SMI signal from the software emulated HBA, activating a Universal Network Device Interface (UNDI) driver to re-enable the NIC driver for communication via a network between the computer and the secondary memory, wherein the second portion of the OS is an OS driver that is able to communicate with the secondary memory through use of the UNDI driver.