1. A program storage device readable by a computer, the program storage device tangibly embodying one or more programs of instructions executable by the computer to perform operations for updating a non-volatile memory in an application environment of an embedded computing system, the operations comprising: detaching the non-volatile memory from all expectable non-volatile memory references; creating a temporary volatile-memory file system for allocation of volatile memory space as needed for the non-volatile memory update process; copying all procedural code required to perform the non-volatile memory update into the volatile memory; changing the system search path definitions temporarily to point to the volatile memory; and performing the non-volatile memory update.