That's correct, there's not one right answer.
Many applications over-reboot, some may under-reboot. For example, the
Windows Media Player 10 install installing to a system where the deskband
was in use by the shell. You "should" reboot to get the updated deskband
available in the shell - but if you don't, the player is still functional
(just not the deskband). Should you reboot? (The answer was that the
player installer will say you can use WMP now, but it won't work fully until
reboot.)
If you check the PendingFileRenames queue and the RunOnce, RunOnceEx, and
etc queues, you can get an appromixate feel for whether or not a reboot was
really needed.
The only particularly dangerous times as regards reboots are where they put
in a non-temp-pathed file into the pendingfile queue. If you then installed
something that reinstalled that marked-deleted file and rebooted, you'd end
up in a rogue state.
There's a little unsupported command line powertoy, rebootchk.exe, I wrote
once that has a vague idea about reboots. If you look for that on MS Live
search, you'll find it (Google evidently didn't notice it). It's dumb, but a
minor time saver. *shrug*
There's definitely not one perfect answer here, not from your standpoint,
and not really from any standpoint. =)
--
Speaking for myself only.
See
http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
--
"Jeff" <Jeff@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0005E940-9D38-4280-80B5-2B2B17C8EECC@xxxxxx
Quote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks to everyone who responded to my post.
>
> The various responses lead me to the conclusion that there may not be one
> right answer. I have always restarted Windows, even if not asked to do so
> by
> the installing program. Other than taking some extra time, I suppose
> there's
> no drawback to doing so. If I get brave I may just restart at selected
> times;
> otherwise, I may continue to restart between application installs.
>
> Thanks again for the feedback.
>
> Jeff
>
> "Jeff" wrote:
> Quote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have always been under the impression that once a software program is
>> installed on a Windows machine, Windows should be restarted. I believe it
>> had
>> something to do with the writing of information to the registry.
>>
>> I recently purchased a new system. I am preparing to reload all of the
>> software that I used on a regular basis. Depending on how many programs I
>> feel I need for my current workload, this will be anywhere between 50 and
>> 125
>> programs.
>>
>> Is it "ideal" to restart Windows after the installation of each program?
>> (Or
>> in some cases between the installation of a suite of software (such as MS
>> Office).)
>>
>> I'm not looking to do any more than necessary; but, I'm not looking to
>> cut
>> corners either.
>>
>> Thanks for any input.
>>
>> Jeff