Patent ID: 6889340

Claim:
A method for using available firmware flash ROM space as a diagnostic drive of a computer system that includes a central processing unit, a hard disk drive, a nonvolatile random access memory, and Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), and a basic input and output system, the method comprising the steps of: modifying the Extensible Firmware Interface to include and EFI driver that operates to configure available nonvolatile random access memory space normally reserved for the BIOS as a diagnostic disk drive; storing the modified Extensible Firmware Interface and the EFI driver in the nonvolatile random access memory; when the computer system is initialized, configuring the available space in the flash memory that is not allocated to the firmware as a diagnostic disk drive; loading one or more diagnostic programs into the diagnostic disk drive; selectively booting the computer system to the EFI command shell in the event of a problem with the computer system; running the one or more diagnostic programs to correct the problem with the computer system; and rebooting the computer system using the operating system on the hard disk drive.