Patent ID: 7263605

Claim:
A method comprising: prior to booting an operating system, reading hardware configuration option data from a plurality of hardware devices coupled to a host, using a hardware configuration program of the host, wherein the plurality of hardware devices are part of a single non-distributed hardware system, said hardware configuration option data is in a standardized format and comprises a series of configuration sets wherein each configuration set facilitates the configuration of at least one hardware setting of at least one of the plurality of hardware devices and includes: an encoded opcode to specify what type of hardware setting is to be configured; and a series of tokenizing strings to facilitate creation of a human readable question and answer related to the hardware setting; upon said reading, generating a user interface utilizing the hardware configuration option data to solicit user input data, using a central user interface manager of the host; on receiving the solicted user input data, processing the user input data, and configuring at least one of the hardware devices in accordance with the user input data, using the hardware configuration program; and after said configuring, booting the operating system.