PAM U3 Shell?

Maybe I'm searching for the wrong keywords, but I got disappointed with my U3 drive on a trip to Europe last month when none of the internet cafe and hotel PCs would allow U3 to run. This then, of course, wouldn't let me get to my Portable Apps and files. I'm thinking of removing U3 and just making it a standard USB stick, but am finding some of the U3 programs seem to be U3 dedicated (Avast, WinRar, etc). There are probably hacks to get them to work like I found here for Trillian (although doesn't integrate with the PAM menu), but it would be much easier if there was some sort of shell that could be run from PAM. This would get rid of the spare drive U3 uses and seemed to be blocked by those PCs.

So what I would like to see is something where I just plug my stick in, PAM starts up, perhaps with PStart (right now I have U3-PStart-PAM-Other software all kicking off after loading U3). From there something that will show the U3 Apps menu and if I want to run (or autorun) any of those they will launch using some sort of U3 shell. But as far as the PC is concerned, it's just an ordinary USB stick.

Also, I haven't gotten this far, but some main password that could protect all the info on the drive from being accessed, like U3 has. Just something that would prevent anyone from accessing the info on the drive without a password. This I'm sure is already out there somewhere for standard portable apps. Can anyone recommend one should I get rid of U3 completely.

Mike