Patent ID: 7721331

Claim:
A method of performing a pre-processing activity, the method comprising: identifying at least one file in a set of files, the set of files defined by a plurality of file names comprised of a variable path file name and a fixed path file name, the at least one file requiring pre-processing activity, the pre-processing activity being a virus checking process; converting the plurality of file names to a plurality of machine independent path names usable to at least one other computer, converting including: computing a plurality of unique file path names from a plurality of file identities, the unique file path names indicating file path names that are unique to a computerized device; and stripping the variable path file name from each of the plurality of unique file path names to create a plurality of fixed path file names that are not unique to the computerized device, the set of files requiring a pre-processing activity to be performed prior to the set of files being accessed by an application operating on the computerized device; scheduling the pre-processing activity on the set of files prior to receiving an invocation of the application that accesses the set of files, the pre-processing activity scheduled to minimize a performance impact on the computerized device, scheduling the pre-processing activity including monitoring a file usage that identifies a frequency that the at least one file is in use by the application, and scheduling the pre-processing activity including monitoring a file usage that identifies an amount of time the at least one file is in use during execution of the application; adaptively scheduling the pre-processing activity on the at least one file based on the file usage of the at least one file; performing the pre-processing activity on the set of files in accordance with the scheduling; storing an indication that pre-processing is complete in association with the at least one file; receiving an invocation of an application that during execution, requires access to the at least one file; in response to identifying the indication for the at least one file that pre-processing activity is complete, executing the application without requiring performance of the pre-processing activity; and wherein adaptively scheduling the pre-processing activity comprises: determining a pre-processing activity execution time, the pre-processing activity execution time occurring at a time when a probability that the at least one file is in use is low based on the file usage of the at least one file.