Reboot for new software why?

[Loosehead]

Surely whatever it does on a reboot it must be able to do anyway. Can anyone explain why when you install virtually anything, it wants you to reboot,? I mean what is actually happenning? On my work PC you don't have a choice, not me but there's a guy here been trying to log in for 45 minutes now but the network is deciding that various software needs up grading and he's on his 6th reboot! and it's forced here! hold on I think the pc is about to be thrown through a window!

[fo3nix]

It's due to the failings of the windows operating system; for some reason they don't want to make it easy for people (I don't know the technicalities of why they can't just improve it, but probably down to some old code that's still in there from the 95 days).

I use a Mac, which I don't need to restart to add or remove software, or pretty much anything else. The most extreme thing I've needed to do is log in and out to reset certain things, but that's a 3 second job. As of right now, it's been switched on for 13 days, 13 hours and 34 minutes. No slow down at all, still as fast as it was when I turned it off almost 2 weeks ago. The only time I need to restart is either if something goes really wrong and panics the kernel (hasn't happened to me yet), or a low-level OS update is required.

The same goes for all unix variants, by the way.

[rojash]

Windows can't replace system files or DLLs that are in use, so when a software installation or upgrade needs to replace these types of files, it sets a flag in the registry that tells windows to replace them during the reboot process (before they are opened). As fo3nix says, it's a pretty primitive hangover from the old days. MS of course, would rather put their resources into bells, whistles, and bloat that they believe drive sales, rather than improving the underlying code that would lead to a more sophisticated product.

You are usually a given a choice though, so if you are installing a lot of stuff, you can usually prevent the reboot, and do it manually after all the other updates have been installed.

Be grateful you weren't around in the days of CP/M when replacing the teeniest bit of hardware meant that you didn't just have to reboot but had to recompile the entire operating system! Ah, those were the days...