Patent ID: 6996706

Claim:
A method for loading and running pre-boot code on a computer that is configured to attempt to boot from a bootable source other than a harddisk before attempting to boot from the harddisk, the method comprising: an act of retrieving pre-boot code from a file on the harddisk into random access memory by hooking device driver code into interrupt Int 13H during each boot attempt from the bootable source other than the harddisk, wherein the file is managed by a file system and the act of retrieving is performed without the file system first being operational on the computer; an act of issuing a plurality of I/O requests directed to a bootable source other than the harddisk; an act of redirecting at least some of the plurality of the I/O requests to the random access memory; an act of reading at least some of the pre-boot code from the random access memory using at least one of the redirected I/O requests; and an act of executing at least a portion of the pre-boot code read from the random access memory.