Patent ID: 7089562

Claim:
A method of converting an application formatted for a first operating systems for use on a user computer having a second operating system, the method comprising the steps of: inserting a disk into the user computer, said disk including a given application having a plurality of programs formatted for the first operating system and being incompatible with the second operating system; providing the user computer with a universal bit reader; using the bit reader to read the bits of the given application; sending the bits read by the universal bit reader to a universal web server via the internet; providing the universal web server with (i) a universal bit reader, (ii) an applications database including a plurality of applications in a plurality of formats compatible with a plurality of operating systems, (iii) an OS database having a plurality of operating systems, and (iv) a table identifying a plurality of applications pointing to programs formatted in different operating systems; the web server a) sending the bits from the user computer to an operating system identifier to identify the first operating system; b) activating an operating system, corresponding to said first operating system, from the OS database; c) activating a driver having said corresponding operating system; d) reading data from and writing data to said disk; e) running the given application on the disk using said corresponding operating system to generate an output file, including the step of connecting data from the given application to the activated driver; f) processing the data from the given applications through a reader information unit in the activated drives to read the data; g) after the data are read, sending the data to an accessor; h) reformatting said output file to be compatible with the second operating system; i) sending the reformatted output file to the user computer; j) searching the applications database for one or more programs of the given application in a format or formats compatible with the second operating system, including the steps of 1) reading the names of the programs in the given application, 2) searching the applications database for programs therein having the read names, 3) for each compatible program that is found, downloading the found compatible program to the user computer, and 4) searching said table for said given application; and if the given application is found in the table, using said application in said table to point to a copy of the given application in a format compatible with the second operating system; and k) downloading to the user computer predetermined script applications, said script applications being written for one operating system but being operable by any one of a multitude of different operating systems.