PROCESS AND APPARATUS FOR INITIALIZING A COMPUTER FROM POWER UP

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus to permit a computer to boot from power up from its own memory units or from a network. The booting process is divided into the five stages of start-up, discovery, software download, software initialization and datafill. A boot ROM directs the stages in the booting process and the policy governing each of these five stages is laid out in a policy file. Each of the stages may be driven by the computer node's local memory unit, such as a local hard disk or non-volatile RAM), or from a software system downloader and configuration manager situated elsewhere in an ATM network where the computer node resides. A failure recovery procedure is also provided to allow the computer to revert to other means in case of failure during the booting process. The invention also provides a machine readable medium comprising a program element to implement the novel boot-up procedure.