Patent ID: 7028305

Claim:
A system for providing one or more application environments on a client computer, the system comprising: an operating system protection layer, executing on an operating system of the client computer, one or more applications executing on said operating system, the operating system protection layer comprising one or more subsystems, wherein said protection layer is provided between one or more applications and said operating system and between each of the one or more applications, wherein the protection layer providing each of the one or more applications with its respective virtual operating environment in which each of the one or more applications execute, wherein said respective virtual operating environment appears to each of the one or more applications to be an installation environment without performing an installation, whereby a “pseudo installation” is created in which at least one of the settings are brought into the respective virtual operating environment at the time the one or more applications executes, and wherein the operating system protection layer comprises a virtual registry that provides a full function registry to each of the one or more applications.