Patent ID: 7159106

Claim:
A system for managing software configuration at manufacture of information handling systems, the system comprising: a manufacture server operable to interface with the information handling system through a network and having a configuration database that associates configuration information for each information handling system with an identifier for that information handling system; a PXE server operable to interface with the information handling system through a network and having a manufacture operating system; a network boot program stored on the PXE server and operable to execute as a PXE client on the information handling system; and a boot kernel stored on the information handling system and operable to download the network boot program and to initiate execution of the PXE client; wherein the PXE client is operable to determine a unique identifier of an information handling system, obtain the configuration information associated with the unique identifier in the configuration database, establish a drive on random access memory of the information handling system with the configuration information and install the manufacture operating system in the drive; wherein the manufacture server further has a manufacture storage database operable to store the manufacture state of the information handling system.