Patent ID: 7840846

Claim:
A computer implemented method for detecting and communicating boot failures, the computer implemented method comprising: configuring a Dynamic Host Control Protocol server to monitor Dynamic Host Control Protocol communications from one or more point of sale devices in a closed network, wherein the closed network comprises connections among a plurality of point of sale devices and one or more Dynamic Host Control Protocol servers; responsive to a failure of a point of sale device to boot from local media, receiving a boot request from the point of sale device, wherein receiving the boot request informs the Dynamic Host Control Protocol server that a boot failure has occurred on the point of sale device; responsive to receiving the boot request, checking an optional server name field in the boot request; if the name of the Dynamic Host Control Protocol server is present in the optional server name field, determining an identity of the point of sale device from the boot request and providing a notification, by the Dynamic Host Control Protocol server, of the boot failure to an administrator, wherein the notification comprises the identity of the point of sale device to allow a repair action to be taken on the point of sale device to correct the failure; and if the name of the Dynamic Host Control Protocol server is not present in the optional server name field, ignoring the boot request.