Patent ID: 8762778

Claim:
A method comprising: using firmware to abstract error information for an operating system (OS) within a computer system, the error information from disparate sources in the computer system, the error information abstracted from platform specific error registers of one of various different platforms, wherein the disparate sources comprise a central processing unit, memory controller, and input/output controller, and wherein the error information is abstracted from different platform error record formats based on different vendor formats for the central processing unit, memory controller, and input/output controller; constructing an error record using the error information, the error record in a common error record format useable by the operating system; depositing the error record into two or more abstracted error access registers comprising memory buffers visible to the OS; making the error information available to the OS by the firmware presenting to the OS, the two or more abstracted error access registers comprising memory buffers visible to the OS; the operating system accessing the error record from the two or more abstracted error access registers, without platform specific knowledge of the platform specific error registers; and using the firmware to support platform error injection, wherein a request to inject errors from the OS is trapped and is fulfilled by the firmware transparently to the OS.