Patent ID: 7062672

Claim:
A method of restoring an impaired software image associated with a first networked computer of a network, including at least several network computers, comprising: determining, at the first computer, that the software image is impaired, generating, by the first computer, a software image request, the image request identifying the software image of the first computer that has been determined to be impaired and the first computer, passing, by the first computer, the image request to plural computers in the network, if the other computer in the network has the image in unimpaired form, restoring the impaired image of the first computer to unimpaired form by supplying the image in unimpaired form from said another computer to the first computer, and supplying the image in unimpaired form to the first computer from one of the plural computers having the unimpaired image, the image request being passed substantially simultaneously to the plural computers, one of the plural computers being the another computer including the unimpaired image.