BIOS Setting Data Recovery via Chronological Tagging
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing information processing apparatuses face difficulties in easily reverting BIOS settings to previous configurations after system trouble, such as boot failures, which can lead to initialization issues and require burdensome user intervention for recovery.
Innovation Solution
An information processing apparatus with a processing unit that writes setting data to a non-volatile memory in a chronological order and uses tags to mark specific boot processing timings, allowing the system to automatically revert to previous settings during boot processing without user intervention.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If the system uses simple initialization to recover from boot failure, then the recovery process is simple, but the initialized settings do not reflect user's customized settings causing failure to initialize peripherals and change of initialization procedure
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically saves a snapshot of the BIOS settings when the system boots up without problems, before any potential failure occurs. This preliminary action ensures that valid user customized settings are preserved and can be restored if boot failure occurs, eliminating the need for simple initialization that would lose customized settings.
2Reliability
If the system saves a snapshot of settings for recovery, then the settings correctness is improved, but the user must manually save settings making the method burdensome and reducing practicability
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs automatic snapshot saving of BIOS settings during normal boot operation without requiring any user intervention. The processing unit automatically captures and stores the setting data in chronological order with tags, enabling the system to self-service its own recovery needs and eliminating the burden of manual settings saving for users.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the system stores multiple setting snapshots in non-volatile memory, then the recovery options are increased, but the writable area of non-volatile memory is limited requiring deletion of older settings data
Solution Approach 1:
The system manages limited non-volatile memory by automatically deleting older setting data snapshots when the writable area becomes full. The memory management unit monitors storage capacity and removes less recent snapshots to make space for new ones, ensuring that the system maintains a reasonable number of recovery options while adapting to the fixed memory capacity constraint.
Data Source
AI summary
An information processing apparatus includes: a processing unit configured to write setting data to be used for boot processing by BIOS (Basic Input Output System) in a predetermined area of a non-volatile memory in an order of changing, and execute the boot processing based on the setting data; a writing unit configured to write at least one tag in the predetermined area of the non-volatile memory at a predetermined timing during the boot processing, the tag corresponding to the timing; and an instruction unit configured to instruct the processing unit to execute the boot processing using setting data written before the tag in the predetermined area of the non-volatile memory.