Re: How often is rebooting strictly necessary?

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Date: 6 Mar 2004 21:44:57 -0800

"Brandon J. Van Every" <try_vanevery_at_mycompanyname@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<c2deqr$1ric5a$1@ID-207230.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> Linux Inquirer wrote:
> >
> > I recently came across this -
> >
> > Windows 2000 Professional needs to be rebooted in only 7 scenarios -
> > [NT 4 had 50]
> >
> > 1. Changing ISA adapter configuration
> > 2. Changing the system font (the USER and Graphics Device Interface
> > have to be 3. recreated)
> > 4. Adding and removing communication ports (due to possible jumper
> > changes)
> > 5. Changing the default system locale
> > 6. Changing the computer/domain name
> > 7. Installing service packs or hotfixes
>
> Whether that's true or not, I can assure you that almost every IHV out there
> does a reboot to effect driver changes. Possible exception for USB devices.
> There's also a fair number of apps that ask for a reboot, although ISVs have
> gotten better about that over the years. To this day almost everyone is
> still saying "it is strongly recommended you turn off all your apps before
> installing" even though I've never once observed the presence of other
> running apps to cause an installation conflict. Virus checkers excepted.
>
> So certainly, in the Windows world there's a bigger problem of "rebooting
> culture," regardless of what may be technically possible. Rebooting is
> probably an engineering path of least resistance. I wonder what causes that
> culture to be so? A particular API? A Microsoft recommendation? I haven't
> done enough Windows device driver work to know. When I was doing 3D
> graphics device drivers I stayed as far away from the gory boring
> installation stuff as possible.

Not clear why Windows needs a reboot every now and then though by
design theres possibly one case. I looked at Wine a while back and
what I gathered was that a reboot in Windows is necessary when
something wants to write to a file that's locked - (e.g. application
installation/changes to paging files etc.) In that case one would use
a move function like MoveFileEx and make an entry in the 'rename
queue' and let Windows would do the necessary move when starting up.
There is maybe one more case where reboot may be useful - (necessary?)
- when some user profile related thing has to be updated exactly once.

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