HP’s new remote support service can even resurrect unbootable PCs – Computerworld

An unbootable PC is every remote worker’s nightmare. It usually means they need hands-on support that they’re not likely to find in their home office or neighborhood Starbucks.

Now there’s hope that even that catastrophe can be corrected remotely. At its Imagine event in Palo Alto, California on Tuesday, HP announced what it calls the industry’s first out-of-band diagnostics and remediation capability that will enable remote technicians to connect, diagnose, and fix problems, even if the PC won’t boot.

The service, launching Nov. 1, lets a technician, with permission from the user, connect to a virtual KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) under the BIOS/UEFI to run diagnostics and take remedial action. With the service, a tech could have corrected the CrowdStrike issue by replacing the flawed configuration file from the bad update, for example, and could even reimage the machine if necessary.