Patent ID: 7111055

Claim:
A method to facilitate automated software installation on a remote computer over the Internet, comprising: creating an archive, wherein creating the archive involves: specifying an operating system and software packages to be included, installing the operating system and software packages on a configuration computer compatible with the remote computer, testing the operating system and software packages on the configuration computer, creating a snapshot of the operating system and software packages, including a configuration file within the snapshot, and saving the snapshot at a site on the Internet specified by an archive locator for download by the remote computer, wherein the snapshot including the configuration file is the archive; storing the archive at the site on the Internet accessible using the archive locator; initializing the remote computer with the custom operating system, wherein the custom operating system allows access to the remote computer over the Internet, wherein the custom operating system determines the location of the archive, downloads the archive, installs the archived software and restarts the remote computer; providing the archive locator to the remote computer, wherein the archive locator is one of, a uniform resource locator (URL) and a proprietary resource locator; requesting the archive from a site specified by the archive locator, wherein the archive includes the operating system and desired software packages pre-configured for the remote computer; upon receiving an authorized request for the archive from the remote computer, downloading the archive to the remote computer from the site specified by the archive locator; and re-initializing the remote computer with the operating system and software packages in the archive.