Patent ID: 7668974

Claim:
A method for local provisioning of device drivers for a portable device, comprising steps of: coupling the portable device comprising a personal computing environment to a host personal computer (PC) system within a network served by a local zone provisioning server, said portable device comprising memory for storing a user's personal computing environment, a network driver for accessing a network interface of the host PC system, and boot software that the user trusts and controls; initiating a boot process on the host PC system from the portable device using the boot software, wherein the boot process boots the host PC system up to a stage where the portable device can connect to the local zone provisioning server and download all needed device drivers for working with peripherals attached to the host PC system; connecting to the network interface of the host PC system using the network driver; determining that the portable device does not have a device driver for a peripheral attached to the host PC system; transmitting a request for the device driver to the local zone provisioning server, wherein the local zone provisioning server allows a user of the portable device to download the device driver presently accessible to the host PC system; and downloading to the portable device the device driver for the peripheral attached to the host PC system from the local zone provisioning server: wherein the local zone provisioning server records versions of host operating systems used by portable devices that attach to the host PC system in the network; wherein the local zone provisioning server performs periodic checks to determine whether all of the device drivers to which the local zone provisioning server has access are current and virus-free, wherein all of the device drivers comprises device drivers for all peripherals, hardware, and host PC systems under control of said local zone provisioning server.