Pre-boot management of drivers and programs

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing one or more sequences of instructions, which when executed, cause:

upon a BIOS obtaining consent from a user to establish a connection to a remote server which incurs a financial charge, said BIOS, operating in a pre-boot environment, establishing said connection to said remote server; and

the BIOS determining whether the remote server has any updates to be performed to the BIOS using the connection.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the connection is established using a carrier network modem.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the BIOS is configured to try all connection options that do not incur a financial charge before using a connection option that incurs a financial charge.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 3 , wherein the connection options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and wired LAN connections.

5. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing one or more sequences of instructions, which when executed, cause:

a BIOS maintaining a repository of network credentials;

the BIOS, while operating in a pre-boot environment, using a set of network credentials obtained from said repository to establish a wireless connection to a remote server; and

a BIOS performing a discovery process to discover devices operationally connecting to said BIOS and load drivers, stored on or accessible to said remote server, associated with said operationally connected devices.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein said drivers comprises one or more operating system drivers.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein said drivers comprises BIOS enhancements.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein in said discovery process information about configuring an operating system is obtained by said BIOS from said remote server.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8 , wherein the information is employed by the BIOS to repair problems that prevent said operation system from booting.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein in said discovery process information about repairing operational problems of the BIOS is obtained by said BIOS from said remote server.

11. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein in said discovery process a communication from a OEM or third party service provider is received by said BIOS from said remote server.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein said discovery process provides, to a network device over a network, access to data stored on a device upon which the BIOS executes.

13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 12 , wherein said data includes one or more of picture files, music files, video files, documents, emails, and other media files or objects stored on said device.

14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 12 , wherein said device is a phone, a personal digital assistance (PDA), a tablet PC, or a laptop computer.

15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing one or more sequences of instructions, which when executed, cause:

a BIOS, executing on a machine, being configured to execute a program; and

the program communicating with a server over a wireless network to determine if an update to the BIOS is available,

wherein the update includes multi-media content that is displayed on or played by the machine during a booting process of the machine.

16. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15 , wherein execution of the one or more sequences of instructions further causes:

downloading the update to the machine; and

automatically installing the update to the BIOS without human intervention.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15 , wherein the multi-media content comprises an advertisement.