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Author Topic: Software Install Tip: When windows wants to reboot, I suggest you let it  (Read 8872 times)

mouser

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I recently had a problem with my pc that i managed to recover from, but it's once again reminded me that it may be asking for serious trouble to put off a request to reboot your computer.

You know the drill -- you run a windows update, or you install or uninstall some software, and you get the dialog saying something like "Windows needs to restart" with buttons to restart now, or do it manually later:
restart-updates-Windows8.png

Now I don't know about you but I often click the button labeled for "I'll do it later myself", and tell myself i'll do it in just a minute.

But then time flies and I forget, and don't get around to rebooting for quite some time.

I'm here to tell you that this is really playing with fire and could come back to bite you badly.

The problem is that when windows wants to reboot to finish installing or uninstalling stuff, it has created entries in your registry to do operations like delete directories, replace files, etc.

And if you postpone rebooting, and then do something that could interefere with these operations (like deleting temporary files, etc.), you could be in for a world of pain -- and sometimes you might not even realize you are doing things that would conflict with these reboot-enabled-operations.

I think in general it's also dangerous because when you make a change that requires a reboot, it's probably a very good idea indeed to make sure they didn't change anything that cause you to have problems booting -- rather than postponing the discovery until 10 different things are installed.

Anyway just my 2 cents -- when windows wants to reboot, let it reboot without much delay.

db90h

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Renegade

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Thanks for the heads up. I tend to reboot, oh, say, maybe next week...
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

nosh

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There's always WhyReboot, for those of us anal enough to want to know why. It's not perfect (seems abandoned) but all it does is query information, so I'd recommend it.

mouser

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WhyReboot is an excellent tool.

lanux128

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^^ +1 for WhyReboot and the dev even dropped by some time back..

https://www.donation...10.msg46620#msg46620

PhilB66

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There's also Pending File Moves:


Pending File Moves is really simple application that displays a list of pending file rename/delete operations, that take place the next time the system boots.


http://koti.mbnet.fi...re.php#pendfilemoves

Source code available too.

Curt

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even worse situation: You (ehmmm...: "I"!) know that Windows wants to reboot, but you install a large recovery program, and and makes an Uninstaller_Pro do the installation. You re-boot, and the Uninstaller_Pro scans and now has a wrong idea of the program you installed. You ("I") use Uninstaller_Pro to remove the recovery program, and puff!!! Windows is no longer available!

At least that is how I imagine it happened, when I lost my Vista.

Thanks for the reminder,mouser!  :up:
« Last Edit: April 11, 2012, 07:20 AM by Curt, Reason: notify »

TaoPhoenix

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Nice tip on WhyReboot. I only had a couple of Flash updates that needed rebooting, though it's annoying that another one appeared AFTER I rebooted. Heh - I'll reboot later (eek!) because I got trapped on CodingHorror!

(Now I have 12 tabs to read!)  :P


db90h

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WhyReboot is very reminiscent of my old http://bitsum.com/other.php#movelatr]console mode MoveLatr utility, which not only enumerated pending move operations, but also allowed you to set them (including delete a file). I distributed it with full source code.. a decade ago (EDIT: 12 YEARS AGO). Been a while.

--- Summary of MoveLater (12 years old, it its teens ;p) --

LICENSE: Freeware, Open Source.

MoveLatr (aka MoveLater) is a nice console mode utility: http://bitsum.com/other.php#movelatr. Freeware, and open source at that. You can not only view pending operations by just running it, but also *set* them, including deletions.

Of course, looking at the source code now, it would look a lot different if I coded it these days ;). Though I'm not sure that HTML markup is the latest copy of the source, need to check.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2012, 04:34 AM by db90h »