Required Windows reboots - will they ever disappear?

fleggett

Gawd
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Nov 30, 2004
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I was updating my 8.1 machine the other day and it required four reboots. The first for various Microsoft-issued updates, a second for an updated nVidia driver set, the third for Acrobat (the full version, not the reader [I have no idea why this requires a reboot]), and a fourth for something I can't recall at the moment.

I realize I could've probably just combined all these into one reboot, but hey, I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to my machine's stability.

This left me wondering - will we ever see the day that, no matter what gets installed, whether it be a device driver, a system update, or an application, Windows - or any OS, for that matter - will never require rebooting? Or is that just physically impossible given the underlying hardware?
 
There isn't a single computer operating system that you update the actual operating system doesn't require a reboot so not sure what you expect, There are multi host ones that can like OpenVMS. That being said I doubt will ever happen with windows since its a registry based operating system..
just to be clear ya on adobe I have no idea other than needing to refresh registry settings, same reason you can't just refresh the NVidia drivers
 
What if Windows was rewritten to eliminate the registry? I know there's been talk about a future Windows iteration no longer requiring the registry as legacy hardware and code is gradually phased out. What does linux use?
 
There are two big events that cause reboots:

1. When a configuration change is made and a binary is running. Often, a programmer will recommend a reboot to force the binary to restart and re-read the configuration change.

2. When a file is required to be updated, but it's already in use. Windows will flag the file in a reserved registry location. When Windows starts back up, it will read this location and move files from a temporary spot into the permanent location.


Microsoft updates often require reboots because they are updating files that are in use. You can almost always delay this reboot.

I'm surprised to see an nvidia driver require a reboot. Since they changed their installer a few years back, it's been pretty good about updating drivers on the fly without require a reboot.

Acrobat installs the Flexera licensing service. It requires a reboot to enable the service. The could modify their installer to take care of everything, but they opted for the "tell the user to reboot" model (this is #1 from my list above).

Windows has come a long way in regards to when it forces a reboot. I imagine it'll only get better, but I highly doubt it will never go away.

Eliminating the registry won't do anything for reboots. The information has to be stored somewhere, be it the registry, a config file, a database, whatever -- it'll all work the same. It's all up to the design of the program being updated on how it's going to handle it.
 
https://www.ksplice.com/

Although it is targeted more for servers.

The linux kernel is the only thing that needs something out of the ordinary to update without rebooting. For things such as drivers, you can unload the module ("driver"), install the update, and load the module again. (Stop x server, rmmod nvidia, update nvidia, modprobe nvidia, start xserver).
 
A lot of reboots are also unnecessary. In fact I tend to reboot my machine about every week just out of habit and I think psychologically previous experiences have caused me to believe a system is just running slower for that reason when it has been 5+ days. There was a program (the name slips my mind), which would actually monitor your system and tell you if the changes recently made required a reboot or not.

Microsoft tends to overdue the rebooting for just about anything to the point it's more wasteful than useful. Software developers I imagine do it for similar, past reasons, but also for necessary ones. Will they ever end? Who knows. MRAM and other technology is said to correct that issue, but in the long-term it isn't going away anytime soon.
 
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