Patent ID: 7865441

Claim:
A method for switching between multiple copies of a software program on a computer system, the method comprising: detecting a plurality of copies of the software program on a computer system; receiving input selecting one of the detected plurality of copies of the software program to be a default copy on the computer system, wherein each copy of the software program in the plurality of copies of the software program is a different version of a same software program, and wherein each of the plurality of copies of the software program are registered with a registry of the computer system such that at a same time each of the copies of the software program is separately identified in the registry of the computer system; and determining whether the selected copy of the software program is a current default copy on the computer system, wherein if the selected copy of the software program is not the current default copy on the computer system then: demoting the current default copy to be an alternate copy; determining one or more features of the current default copy; ensuring that each of the one or more features no longer exhibits a default interface on the computer system such that only one copy of the software program is operable at any given point in time and other copies, in the plurality of copies of the software program are hidden from users; and promoting the selected copy of the software program to be a next current default copy, wherein the default copy is a single copy of the software program that presents itself to a user or another computer program as the only copy of the software program on the computer system at any given time.