System and method for intelligent and reliable booting

摘要

A system and method for intelligent and reliable booting of a PBX-supporting computer includes a system bus coupled to at least one central processor. Multiple booting devices are connected to the system bus including a hard disk drive, a removable media device, and at least one of RAM, NVRAM, and FLASHROM. Multiple monitoring devices are connected to the system bus to provide reliability data regarding each of the booting devices. A hierarchy of the booting devices is established, the order of which, in the absence of any system errors, is RAM, one of NVRAM and FLASHROM, the hard disk drive, and the removable media device. A power fail sensor detects power failures which have affected the system, and provides data regarding the reliability of RAM and the hard disk drive. A watchdog timer sensor detects errors in the operation of a central processor, and a memory status sensor detects memory checksum errors. Both the watchdog timer sensor and the memory status sensor provide reliability data regarding RAM, NVRAM and FLASHROM. A removable media error sensor provides reliability data regarding the removable media device. Based upon the data provided by the monitoring devices, the system selects the most reliable booting device from which to load an operating system program in to the main memory.