IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS, PROGRAM UPDATING METHOD AND RECORDING MEDIUM

An image forming apparatus includes hardware resources used by an image forming process, a storage section which stores one or more programs for carrying out processes of user services and control services related to the image forming process, a start information acquiring section which acquires starting information of each of the programs stored in the storage section, a module identification information acquiring section which acquires module identification information of at least one arbitrary program from a recording medium which is recorded with updating data for a plurality of programs, an updating data selection section which selects the updating data corresponding to the at least one arbitrary program from the recording medium, based on the starting information and the module identification information, and an updating section which updates the at least one arbitrary program stored in the storage section based on the selected updating data.