Home PCs are ubiquitous in today's world, but their maintenance is costly and inefficient. For hardware or software problems, users have to call support centers to try to fix their problems under the guidance of a technician. This process is time consuming and frustrating for users. When the problem cannot be fixed by a phone call, sometimes it is necessary to take the computer to a repair center or have a technician make a house call, a very expensive proposition. With the advent of Intel^® Active Management Technology (Intel^® AMT), the barriers to greater efficiency of home PC maintenance are removed, and it becomes possible to maintain home PCs remotely without too much imposition on the user.

Intel AMT is designed to provide a new level of IT management. With this technology, the computer can be accessed, diagnosed, and healed remotely. The following key features are supported by Intel AMT:

• Out-Of-Band (OOB) System Management allows remote management of platforms independent of the Operating System (OS) and regardless of the power state and OS state. Essentially, the only requirements are that the platform has a network connection and standby power.
• Non Volatile Memory (NVM) holds asset ID and inventory information so that the IT technician can access this information remotely.
• The remote diagnosis and healing function enables the IT technician to reboot the machine, diagnose hardware or software problems, fix software problems, and install an OS remotely.

Intel AMT implements these features as new hardware and firmware capabilities on the platform's motherboard. Additionally, Intel AMT uses the platforms' auxiliary power to keep the features active even when the platform is turned off. Therefore, even with a crashed hard drive or locked OS, an IT technician can still access the platform for remote asset, inventory, and software management or remote diagnoses.

Up to now, Intel AMT has mostly been used in the enterprise environment to improve a corporation's IT management. In this paper we propose a new usage model in which Intel AMT is used to remotely maintain home PCs and small business PCs (such as those in hotels, Internet cafés, etc.). This usage model provides remote diagnosis, healing, OS installation, and other features.

This paper is organized as follows. We first introduce the concept of remote maintenance. Then we discuss the architecture of the usage model and describe in detail the work process. We go on to discuss the challenges inherent in this usage model and propose solutions. Finally, we present a typical usage scenario.