System and method for portable emulation of operating environment

Abstract

The invention embeds an emulation module in removable media, for use in replicating an operating environment on a laptop or other remote machines. The emulation module prompts the user to capture environmental settings on an originating machine, such as display settings, network settings, input / output, applications, working data files and other parameters on a removable media. The user may then insert the removable media in a compatible reader attached to the laptop or other secondary or host machine, and upon activation of the emulation module reproduce the screen display, applications, data files and other resources on the host machine. When the user is finished working on the host machine, the emulation module may restore the settings of the operating environment on that machine to their preexisting state. Working data may be synchronized between the originating and host machines.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] The subject matter of this application a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 09 / 808,351 file Mar. 15, 2001 which is related to the subject matter of U.S. application Ser. No. 09 / 360,337 filed Jul. 26, 1999, entitled “Self Contained Application Disk for Automatically Launching Application Software or Starting Devices and Peripherals”, assigned or under duty of assignment to the same entity as this application, and which application is incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The invention relates to the field of computer software, and more particularly to replication of desktop settings, file structures and other aspects of a computer operating environment from a primary computer or other client to a notebook computer or other portable device via removable media. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] The advent of the Internet as well as network operating systems such as Novell Netware™ and Microsoft Windows NT™ ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is a system and method that allows a user to take a removable media, like a flash drive, and load it onto a different machine to run an emulation module. The emulation module can read and use the media to change the settings on the new machine. This allows the user to create a temporary environment on the new machine that can be saved and returned to the original settings when the media is removed. The system also allows for synchronization of application data between the original and new machines.

Problems solved by technology

While the sharing of data and also the application suite between primary and host or secondary machines is a widespread practice, there is as yet no way in which the operating environment itself may be mirrored between the two platforms via removable media.

While some of those environmental settings may not affect the operation of applications or ability to access and save data files, the lack of consistency between machines may hinder other functions, such as ability to print, dial up or otherwise access the Internet or other network resources, scan for disk integrity or other functions.

Any attempt to reconcile these parameters when traveling must now be done manually by the user, which is a tedious and error-prone process, or both machines must be directly connected via cabling or other techniques to image one drive to another.

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