1. A method of rebuilding the state of a computer system, comprising: providing a static tree structure representing a general computer system; extracting component information indicating hardware and software components of the computer system, from diagnostic data of the computer system; and generating a representation of the computer system according to the tree structure and the component information, wherein the computer system is part of a first computer system and the diagnostic data is communicated from the first computer system to a second computer system, the second computer system rebuilding the state of the computer system.