Patent ID: 7216169

Claim:
A system for administering personal computer health status so as to provide an extensible framework in which multiple service providers can each monitor different aspects of personal computer health and provide the results to an end-user of a personal computer in a single, cohesive interface, the system being embedded in a computer readable storage media and comprising: a provider subsystem for providing services relating to the personal computer health status, wherein the services include acquiring health status information of the personal computer; a health engine subsystem for processing the health status information acquired by the provider subsystem and rendering health status notifications, the health engine subsystem comprising an open framework having a standardized interface allowing external service providers to each register one or more provider modules with the health engine subsystem and thereby including multiple registered provider modules from multiple external service providers within the provider subsystem, each provider module of an external service provider acquiring the health status information for a particular aspect of personal computer health, the particular aspect being different from aspects of personal computer health acquired by other provider modules, wherein the health engine subsystem comprises task execution logic for enforcing mutual exclusion rules regarding execution of tasks by a consumer of corrective actions to be taken to improve the personal computer health; and a client user interface subsystem for reporting overall health status of the personal computer to the end-user of the personal computer on a per computer basis and in accordance with the health status notifications, wherein the client user interface subsystem reports to the end-user corrective actions for improving the health of the personal computer, and wherein enforcing the mutual exclusion rules comprises determining that two tasks of the tasks cannot be performed simultaneously and while displaying the two tasks to the end-user of the personal computer, disabling execution of one of the two tasks in a client interface displaced to the end-user.