Patent ID: 8407662

Claim:
A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium encoded with instructions executable by a processing system to perform a method for providing network driver injection into a target image to transform the target image to be compatible with one or more source machines, the instructions comprising code for: facilitating access to a source system registry file of a source machine, without copying a source image; facilitating access to a target system registry file of a target machine, without copying a target image, wherein the target image comprises an operating system, and wherein the target machine is distinct from the source machine; determining whether one or more source network interface cards of the source machine are compatible with the target image; and if the one or more source network interface cards are not compatible with the target image, performing network interface driver injection, wherein the operation of performing network interface driver injection comprises: determining one or more source network components associated with the one or more source network interface cards; determining source network configuration of the one or more source network components; determining target network configuration of one or more target network components of the target image; determining whether the source network configuration conflicts with the target network configuration, wherein determining whether the source network configuration conflicts with the target network configuration comprises: booting the target machine using the target image; extracting first system registry information of the target machine after booting the target machine using the target image, the first system registry information comprising configuration values for the target network components; booting the target machine using the source image, wherein the source image is compatible with the target machine and the source machine; extracting second system registry information of the target machine after booting the target machine using the source image, the second system registry information comprising configuration values for the target network components and the source network components based on the source image; if the source network configuration conflicts with the target network configuration, adjusting the source network configuration so that the source network configuration does not conflict with the target network configuration; and injecting, to the target system registry file, the source network configuration of the one or more source network components.