Patent ID: 7509637

Claim:
A method for automatically updating a portion of a system registry of a computing device based upon an occurrence of a predefined event that affects the proper functioning of an application program module in the computing device, comprising the steps of: building a portion of self-registration data into a resource fork of the application program module, the self-registration data being automatically updatable to be in sync with one or more corresponding linking files of the application program, the self-registration data being part of the resource fork of the application program module such that explicit calls to separate self-registration files are avoided; determining that the predefined event that affects the proper functioning of the application program module in the computing device has occurred; and if so, determining whether the portion of the system registry of the computing device needs to be updated because at least one of the following conditions exists: any information in a registration cache has changed; and a registration cache does not exist; and if so, automatically updating the portion of the system registry by referring to the corresponding self-registration data built into the resource fork of the application program module.