Operating system independent system for running utility programs in a defined environment

A system which builds an operating system-independent environment for executing utility programs is created by establishing a virtual drive that resides on a physical disk drive within the native file system of a native operating system. A virtual drive is a set of files on a physical disk drive that is configured to emulate a physical disk drive. The virtual drive can be deleted by a computer user and similarly can be re-established by the computer user. The virtual drive is bootable and activates an operating system that makes all system resources accessible to the utility programs and also allows the computer user to use the disk space that is allocated for the virtual drive, if desired.