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Intel® Upgrade Service¹ - How it works

Down-the-wire hardware upgrades: How it works

How down-the-wire hardware upgrades work

A service provider (either third party or internal IT Administrator) would execute an upgrade as follows:

  1. Inventory their customers' Intel® Q45 Express Chipset-based desktop PCs to see which ones are upgradeable. service providers get the tool to complete this inventory from Intel after becoming an authorized reseller, which you can request at upgradesadmin@intel.com.
  2. Now that the correct number of upgrades needed has been determined, the service provider can order the upgrade keys from an authorized distributor
  3. Upgrade keys are then downloaded by the service provider onto the target PCs.
  4. At the command from the service provider management console, target PCs will contact Intel's Authorization Server via the Internet for secure validation of the upgrade key and activation of the upgrade. The upgrade enables changes to the firmware (driven by the Intel® Active Management Technology Management Engine in the chipset) that in turn modify the hardware. At that point the PC is ready for deployment of the manageability and security technologies by the service provider.

Upgradeable products

Intel® Upgrade Service is architected to be highly flexible and should be compatible with most third-party management consoles.

¹ Intel® Upgrade Service requires the computer system to have upgrade-enabled BIOS and Intel chipset, network hardware and software, as well as connection with a power source and the World Wide Web. The Intel® Upgrade Application must be deployed on the target computer running one of the supported Operating Systems in order to perform upgrade operations. Use of the upgrade may require configuration by the purchaser. Intel Upgrade Service is not available in all geographies or on all computer systems. For more information, see your Intel representative or support.intel.com/support/go/upgradeservice.htm.