Back to results
US 8,621,195 B2Granted
Disabling communication ports
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsChin-Yu Wang, Jen-Chun Hsu
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Example embodiments disclosed herein relate to enabling or disabling a port by writing to a reset write-once register. A boot process for a device is initiated. The reset write-once register is set, during the boot process, to disable or enable the port.
Claims15
A method comprising:
- initiating a boot process for a computing device including an external communication port;
- setting a register to disable the external communication port during the boot process,
- wherein once the register is set, the register cannot be changed without resetting the computing device;
- and
- retrieving setting information associated with the external communication port from a non-volatile memory,
- wherein the setting of the register is based on the setting information, the setting information can be accessed during the boot process, and the setting information is protected by an authentication mechanism.
3 more elements
A computing device comprising:
- a communication port;
- a register;
- a boot module to start a boot process of the computing device, a setting module to set the register during the boot process to either enable or disable the communication port,
- wherein once the register is set, the register cannot be reset without a reboot of the computing device;
- and
- a non-volatile memory,
- wherein the setting module retrieves setting information from the non-volatile memory, the register is set based on the setting information, and the setting information is password protected.
4 more elements
A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium storing instructions that, if executed by at least one processor of a device, cause the at least one processor to:
- initiate a boot process for the device;
- set a reset write-once register, during the boot process, to disable or enable one or more data lines of an external port of the device,
- wherein if the register is set to disable the one or more data lines, the register controls a switch to drive the one or more data lines to a state;
- and
- retrieve, during the boot process, register settings from a non-volatile memory associated with a basic input output system of the device,
- wherein the reset write-once register is set based on the register settings, and modifications to the non-volatile memory are protected by an authentication scheme.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.