Patent ID: 7712086

Claim:
A portable storage device comprising: an interface; and one or more storage elements, coupled to a host computer through the interface, that store one or more applications that can be executed by the host computer, with the host computer identifying and installing device driver information specific to one or more storage elements on the host computer such that the host computer detects a presence of the one or more storage elements while not maintaining information specific to the applications in a system information store of the host computer by having the applications queried regarding functionality of each of the applications through an operating system of the host computer, the one or more storage elements comprising: a private store to maintain environment settings associated with the applications and to receive requests to access environment settings of the applications of the one or more storage elements without altering environment settings of the host computer, and in response to the requests, accessing the environment settings in the private store rather than the environment settings on the host computer, wherein the private store is configured with a separate private local profile for each of the applications; and an autorun module that is accessed by the host computer to present a user interface identifying applications that can be run by executing corresponding executable files in the one or more storage elements, wherein the autorun module is configured with information necessary to execute each of the applications of the one or more storage elements, wherein each application requires activation upon being executed by the host computer for a first time, wherein activation binds the application uniquely to the portable storage device through use of an identifier identifying the portable storage device so the application can only be executed from the bound portable storage device, wherein activation comprises writing activation information to the portable storage device, and wherein activation allows execution of each application for each time after the first time by the host computer or by another computer to which the portable storage device is coupled.