Patent ID: 8508770

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: at least one cover unit mounted in the image forming apparatus; at least one replaceable unit, comprising a customer replaceable unit monitoring unit (CRUM) to manage a state of the replaceable unit, to participate in an image forming operation of the image forming apparatus; a sensing unit to sense whether the at least one cover unit is opened or closed; and a main board unit to cut off a power supply when the at least one cover unit is opened, and maintaining cut off to the at least one replaceable unit for a predetermined period of time that begins after closing the cover, wherein the CRUM comprises: a memory unit to store an initialization program different from an operating system (OS) operated by the image forming apparatus unique information associated with the replaceable unit and status information on use of consumables used in the image forming apparatus; and a central processing unit (CPU) which communicates with the memory unit, wherein the CPU is operable to perform initialization of the replaceable unit using the initialization program which operates separately from the OS operated by the image forming apparatus when the replaceable unit is detached from and attached to the image forming apparatus, to perform authentication and cryptographic data communication with the main board unit.