Patent ID: 7404072

Claim:
A system for loading images, comprising: a read-only memory (ROM) for storing the images; an initialization module for initializing a running environment of the system, and for starting up a procedure for automatically loading any of the images; an image-searching module for searching the images in the ROM; an image-validating module for validating images that are found by the image-searching module; an image-loading module for loading valid images to a memory of a network device; and a mode-switching module for switching the system to an engineering mode, in which the ROM can be maintained and a specific image defined by a user can be downloaded; wherein the image-searching module searches an auto-booting image in the ROM, the image-validating module validates the auto-booting image, and the image-loading module loads the auto-booting image to the memory of the network device if the auto-booting image is valid, and if the auto-booting image is invalid, the image-searching module searches a diagnosing image in the ROM, the image-validating module validates the diagnosing image, and the image-loading module loads the diagnosing image to the memory of the network device if the diagnosing image is valid.