Patent ID: 7797540

Claim:
A system comprising: a computer, including a computer readable medium and processor operating thereon; software, executing on the computer, which includes a plurality of configuration values; a plurality of signatures, wherein each signature is associated with a potential problem with the software and further indicates a remedy to the potential problem, and wherein each signature includes metadata which includes at least one of a signature name, an indication of a severity of the potential problem, and information describing the potential problem; a signature repository on the computer, wherein the signature repository is adapted to store the plurality of signatures a predictive support component that compares signatures from the signature repository to data obtained from data sources associated with the software, determines any signature matches between the signatures and the data, which each indicate one of the potential problems, and automatically retrieves new signatures and updates the signature repository with the new signatures; and wherein when the predictive support component determines one or more signature match matches, indicating potential problems, the predictive support component determines the remedy indicated by the signature, ranks the potential problems according to the severity indicated by the metadata included with each signature in each signature match; presents a description of each potential problem to a user based on the metadata included with the signature, and automatically executes instructions included in the remedy to change the configuration values associated with the software.