Patent ID: 8239667

Claim:
A method, comprising: loading a first operating system into a first memory region of physical memory of a platform; loading a second operating system into a second memory region of the physical memory while suspending the first operating system into a sleep mode; and switching back to the first operating system without rebooting the platform while suspending the second operating system into a sleep mode; wherein a system management random access memory (SMRAM) boundary protects the second operating system from direct memory accesses; wherein loading the second operating system into the second memory region of the physical memory while suspending the first operating system into a sleep mode comprises: (a) suspending one or more hardware devices being used by the first operating system; (b) saving a state of each of the one or more hardware devices of the first operating system; (c) re-basing the physical memory such that an upper region of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) within a SMRAM range is at base 0 address; (d) setting up one or more ACPI tables for the second operating system; (e) retaining one or more ACPI tables for the first operating system; and (f) loading an OS RAM image of the second operating system into the second memory region.