Patent ID: 8190037

Claim:
A fault prediction method for predicting a plurality of faults in a target device, the method comprising the steps of: collecting internal information of the target device output from the target device; generating one or more criteria for defining a deviation from a normal state based on the collected internal information of the target device; incorporating the one or more criteria into a device state discriminator; identifying a deviation from a normal state in the target device according to the one or more criteria using the device state discriminator; selecting which fault in the target device is to be output to the user; and outputting a fault prediction as a result of the identifying step to a user, wherein one or more of the steps are performed by a processor, wherein a state of the device corresponding to the one or more criteria incorporated into the device state discriminator is not selected until a predetermined condition is satisfied, and wherein the result of discrimination is output as a test result differently from the selected fault in the target device until the predetermined condition is satisfied.