Method and infrastructure for recognition of the resources of a defective hardware unit

A program storage device readable by computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by said computer to perform a method of recognizing resources of a computer, said computer comprising a system serial number and a broken hardware unit, and said broken hardware unit comprising a non-volatile memory unit and enablement definition data relating to functions of said broken hardware unit, said method comprising:

• starting said computer;
• reading a read/write non-volatile memory field of said non-volatile memory unit to acquire a previously entered system serial number;
• determining if said previously entered system serial number acquired from said read/write non-volatile memory field is the same as said system serial number;
• and
• preventing acceptance by said computer of said enablement definition data of said broken hardware unit and outputting an error message, when said previously entered system serial number and said system serial number do not match so as to prevent addition of capacity and features of said broken hardware unit to said computer.