Methods and systems are provided for updating and recovering firmware
within computers over a distributed network. While a computer is in an
operating system independent state, a determination is made as to whether
the firmware within the computer is valid. The firmware may be the BIOS
for the computer. If it is determined that the current firmware is
invalid, a recovery request is sent to a manager computer monitoring for
recovery requests. The manager computer sends a new firmware image over
the network to the computer. The invalid firmware is then updated with
the new firmware image. An instruction to update the firmware of the
computer may also be sent from a manager computer to computers monitoring
for instructions. When the instruction is received, the computer
transitions to an operating system independent recovery state, receives a
new firmware image over the network, and updates with the new firmware
image.