The two biggest offenders in terms of re-starts, at least within my own limited scope, are iTunes and Adobe. Both require re-starts for simple updates (i.e.: New safari? here's your re-start) while they could just re-start the services they rely on. I stopped using Norton Antivirus or Trendmicro after security essentials came out but I do remember Trendmicro was asking for restarts.
Acrobat Pro is such a b*tch regarding rebooting. For every single small update it wants one. And it wouldn't even do regular Reader updates while it's waiting for a restart. And Adobe doesn't release "point releases", so every time it's installed new on some PC it needs a dozen reboots until it's ready to use. Just plain ridiculous.
Adobe only needs a reboot if you leave Internet Explorer (or an Adobe program) open. Close your browser before it starts the install and you're fine, and won't even get the reboot prompt.
For the amount of time I lose every year at work on these it would be cheaper to buy me two computers and just swap my profile from one to the second so I could resume work ona fully patched and restarted #2 while #1 grinds through the restart. IF this isn't overridable on home user systems I think I've found my first reason to stick to w7.
If you haven't found 3 minutes to reboot after 3 days of warnings (and after already knowing in most cases exactly what day updates get pushed out), you may want to consider getting a second machine anyway - you're obviously a cyborg from the future who doesn't eat or sleep.
Or you could just use group policy like the article stated.
You can use group policy editor if you have W8 Pro or Ultimate as HP and basic do not have group policy editor, at least windows 7 and prior don't. This could change in W8 but I doubt it.
To get all my applications up and running at work, a reboot can seriously take me 20 minutes to get back to productive work. Granted, I'm a developer and getting things like my IDE and servers up and running can take some time, but reboots really are a pain.
Fail. You missed the reason it takes 20 minutes. It doesn't take 20 minutes to reboot and load windows, but it takes 20 minutes to reopen all the programs, log into various systems, open up remote windows, reopen browser windows to pages you were using for reference et al.
It's the same reason I don't reboot except when absolutely necessary.
I was the same way at the last job, but less so at the new one (SSD on proper desktop workstation vs HDD on workstation laptop, and less disparate things to open up to work on at once).
To all the doubters, when you have better than half a dozen different projects to get up and running that you flip between depending on who's yelling the loudest, reboots can _really_ suck.
your station has all night for the post install and restart then.
tweaking the preloaded services, add a drop of autostart and grab a nice cup of coffee after authentication at login in the morning. that should do the trick once a month even with an old style sluggish hdd.
This is a silly comment, and he has a valid point.
As always, MS needs to look to Apple for what to copy next. With Lion, Apple tries really hard to save app state across reboots, so that a reboot will restart all the apps that were running at shutdown, with the documents they had open.
It's not perfect, to be sure, and the two current worst culprits are Apple's own apps: - iTunes appears to save no state regarding info like what playlist you currently had selected, and what song was playing. But we all know iTunes (for reasons no-one outside Apple can understand) is programmed by a crack team of C-List programmers that Apple recruits from the worst performing community college CS programs across the nation, so that's no surprise.
- Safari has a more difficult job. It does acceptably at re-opening all windows that were open, with all their tabs, and with minimized windows still minimized. BUT it does not remember the scrolling location of pages, and it does not remember your position in multi-media. (This might be hard to impossible for flash, but should be possible and not hard for "pure" media like h264 files.)
However, imperfect as it is, it works really really nicely. I used to put off installing updates for days or weeks because it was just such a hassle to restart all the apps after a reboot, but now it doesn't phase me at all because my experience has been that the system works. The only minor hassles will be, as I said - losing some minor state in iTunes - having to rescroll if there were some pages I was part way down - losing my place in web video (rare, but irritating when it happens)
This isn't meant to be (only) a rah-rah Apple post. MS clearly (unlike some commenters) appreciates that there is a real problem here and are doing what they can to fix it, but apparently have concluded that copying what Lion does is just too ambitious for Win 8 (so presumably will arrive in either Win8 Sp1 or Win9).
The last thing MS need to do is copy Apple. OSX is vastly inferior. But as for copying Apple... It's often the other way around, all Lion does is play catch up to things Windows has had for years. Some things over a decade (full screen apps). Or even copying Windows with how the buttons look now (square with slight rounded corners).
And since Vista, Windows has had a feature to save all current software states that are open, but the software needs to support the feature. So once again Apple are copying Windows with Lion. I'm sure by the time Win 8 is out Apple will have ripped off a ton of it's features with small updates to OSX. Just like they have done in the past when MS demo stuff many months before release.
Try a SSD as your system disk. Windows Update patching is tremendously faster this way, and system shutdowns/restarts are of course a lot faster as well.
Not to mention all the other stuff that's also vastly accelerated by a SSD, and all this to a much lower cost than a full replacement PC system.
Yeah, rebooting at work really s*cks. However, I just set Win 7 to "automatically download and manually install updates", so the nagging about needed a reboot starts only after I press the "update now" button. Works OK for me.
Stop the presses. DailyTech has much better coverage of this than AnandTech does; all the old don't do anything until I tell you to options are still there.
Agreed, there's certain things I can't stand about Windows now I've used Ubuntu at home. And I think by far my biggest gripe is the updates.
I mean, sod restarts, how about EVERY SINGLE application requiring it's own personal in-RAM-with-status-icon update manager.
So, every time you log in it takes 30 minutes to boot and a dozen balloons pop up telling you there is a new version of mickey-mouse-soft-7 out.
Add to that trying to explain how to keep your machine up to date and secure to your parents and other people who aren't very computer literate. Then it's 5 hours of spam and malware cleaning because they haven't updated anything in 12 months.
Ubuntu --> Click the update button. Updates done. Requires a restart maybe once a month.
Though to be honest now that I've just stuck Ubuntu on my Dad's PC he still doesn't run the updates but I wrote him a manual and he can browse the web without it breaking every six months.
*written from my Windows 7 machine with 19 updates that fail to install and roll back every morning I come into work* (apparently it's something to do with SQL Express)
There are patch and kernel updates that do require restarts in linux as well, every 6 months you're getting a new rev too which require a total reinstall unless you're brave enough to attempt an upgrade or stick with an LTS.
I'm using both windows and linux and frankly MS has gotten better over the years while linux has started having more of these issues. My guess is that we're at pretty much optimal state now.
I hate to say it, but these forced reboots are probably saving me in the long run, although that's not due to any fixes from Microsoft. My gut tells me the worst sources of security and stability issues on my system are all Flash. And the Adobe flash updater won't even notify you of an update except upon reboot -- which basically never happens any more, except due to these forced ones from Microsoft.
Its bad enough those Flash guys deliver such horribly buggy software, but it really bugs me that as the provider of the software that most desperately needs frequent, real-time upgrades, they have one of the least sophisticated upgrade processes out there.
Hear hear. And if the internet connection isn't up yet when I okay the install it simply fails and another reboot is required.
Frankly, I don't want reboots at all. I tend to postpone updates a lot because of them. If that option isn't available in Windows 8, that would be a step back for me. I had really hoped they'd get rid of the need to reboot.
Then again, wasn't there something about reboots in Windows 8 restoring things to how they were? If that's the case then I can certainly live with them.
Microsoft is years behind modern OSes like GNU/Linux or Mac OS. The only reboots needed should be when you upgarde your kernell, if at all. And of course without stupid waits watching a "Configuring your updates..." notice before continuing updating.
is there a way to disable what is essentially a crash? i mean to the user (me in this case) if my pc reboots during the night it makes no odds whether it's a crash or due to windows updates. it's the same thing IMO
now there's a way to disable it (iirc the auto reboot is enabled by default on win7)
if there's no option to pause it or anything either, then i'd have to disable windows update and only run it when i am about to reboot anyway. video encoding takes a long time and i'm not gonna interrupt a 2-3 day long encode and start again because MS wants to remove options and "appleify" things for me.
They need to work on patch sizes, and patches being superceded.
It fucking blows when you download a big patch..
Check windows update again.. and there are more patches for the patches you just got. This should never, ever happen.
You should never, ever have to check Windows Update several times in a row to get new updates. It should show all updates, which should have all the latest security patches rolled in.
Make them differential, if needs be, like Xbox live patches - they're wonderful and quick.
Microsoft still has a long way to go with Windows Update.
Didn't the malware scammers recently crack the Update channel... or at least do some good social engineering with an authentic-looking pop-up Update box?
The whole thing just seems so ripe for abuse. I've got all updates set to manual, notify only. I let the Microsoft ones through pretty quickly, but everything else gets kept on ice for several days while I listen for word on the street of any big problems...
All that said, why is it taking so long for Windows to get modular enough that services can be restarted without rebooting the kernel?
I hate it when I build a new box or rebuild one and suddenly after doing other stuff waiting for 105 updates to install I realise that its been sat for 40 minutes half way though asking me if I want to install IE!!!!!!
Windows 8 machines will require a restart only when security updates requiring a restart are installed... When one or more updates does require a PC restart, <a href="http://windows7vswindows8.com/2011/windows-7-vs-wi... 8 </a> will alert users in a message on the log-in screen that persists for three days.
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39 Comments
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InternetGeek - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
The two biggest offenders in terms of re-starts, at least within my own limited scope, are iTunes and Adobe. Both require re-starts for simple updates (i.e.: New safari? here's your re-start) while they could just re-start the services they rely on. I stopped using Norton Antivirus or Trendmicro after security essentials came out but I do remember Trendmicro was asking for restarts.MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Acrobat Pro is such a b*tch regarding rebooting. For every single small update it wants one. And it wouldn't even do regular Reader updates while it's waiting for a restart. And Adobe doesn't release "point releases", so every time it's installed new on some PC it needs a dozen reboots until it's ready to use. Just plain ridiculous.MrS
GTVic - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Installing Acrobat without a reboot is not an issue. Adobe turns on the reboot requirement by default but it is not needed.Please turn in your IT badge and pocket protector.
Ammaross - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Adobe only needs a reboot if you leave Internet Explorer (or an Adobe program) open. Close your browser before it starts the install and you're fine, and won't even get the reboot prompt.DanNeely - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
For the amount of time I lose every year at work on these it would be cheaper to buy me two computers and just swap my profile from one to the second so I could resume work ona fully patched and restarted #2 while #1 grinds through the restart. IF this isn't overridable on home user systems I think I've found my first reason to stick to w7.Omoronovo - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
If you haven't found 3 minutes to reboot after 3 days of warnings (and after already knowing in most cases exactly what day updates get pushed out), you may want to consider getting a second machine anyway - you're obviously a cyborg from the future who doesn't eat or sleep.Or you could just use group policy like the article stated.
dubyadubya - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
You can use group policy editor if you have W8 Pro or Ultimate as HP and basic do not have group policy editor, at least windows 7 and prior don't. This could change in W8 but I doubt it.mpschan - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
To get all my applications up and running at work, a reboot can seriously take me 20 minutes to get back to productive work. Granted, I'm a developer and getting things like my IDE and servers up and running can take some time, but reboots really are a pain.Iketh - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
You and the OP just need an SSD. In your positions, how have you not experienced one yet?DanNeely - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I have one at home. At work the bean counters have pointy hair.LoupeGarou - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
ROFLMAO....pointy hair...niva - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Death to the pointy haired bosses!Ammaross - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Fail. You missed the reason it takes 20 minutes. It doesn't take 20 minutes to reboot and load windows, but it takes 20 minutes to reopen all the programs, log into various systems, open up remote windows, reopen browser windows to pages you were using for reference et al.It's the same reason I don't reboot except when absolutely necessary.
icrf - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
I was the same way at the last job, but less so at the new one (SSD on proper desktop workstation vs HDD on workstation laptop, and less disparate things to open up to work on at once).To all the doubters, when you have better than half a dozen different projects to get up and running that you flip between depending on who's yelling the loudest, reboots can _really_ suck.
dustwalker13 - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
reboot at the end of day.your station has all night for the post install and restart then.
tweaking the preloaded services, add a drop of autostart and grab a nice cup of coffee after authentication at login in the morning. that should do the trick once a month even with an old style sluggish hdd.
name99 - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
This is a silly comment, and he has a valid point.As always, MS needs to look to Apple for what to copy next. With Lion, Apple tries really hard to save app state across reboots, so that a reboot will restart all the apps that were running at shutdown, with the documents they had open.
It's not perfect, to be sure, and the two current worst culprits are Apple's own apps:
- iTunes appears to save no state regarding info like what playlist you currently had selected, and what song was playing. But we all know iTunes (for reasons no-one outside Apple can understand) is programmed by a crack team of C-List programmers that Apple recruits from the worst performing community college CS programs across the nation, so that's no surprise.
- Safari has a more difficult job. It does acceptably at re-opening all windows that were open, with all their tabs, and with minimized windows still minimized. BUT it does not remember the scrolling location of pages, and it does not remember your position in multi-media. (This might be hard to impossible for flash, but should be possible and not hard for "pure" media like h264 files.)
However, imperfect as it is, it works really really nicely.
I used to put off installing updates for days or weeks because it was just such a hassle to restart all the apps after a reboot, but now it doesn't phase me at all because my experience has been that the system works. The only minor hassles will be, as I said
- losing some minor state in iTunes
- having to rescroll if there were some pages I was part way down
- losing my place in web video (rare, but irritating when it happens)
This isn't meant to be (only) a rah-rah Apple post. MS clearly (unlike some commenters) appreciates that there is a real problem here and are doing what they can to fix it, but apparently have concluded that copying what Lion does is just too ambitious for Win 8 (so presumably will arrive in either Win8 Sp1 or Win9).
B3an - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
The last thing MS need to do is copy Apple. OSX is vastly inferior. But as for copying Apple... It's often the other way around, all Lion does is play catch up to things Windows has had for years. Some things over a decade (full screen apps). Or even copying Windows with how the buttons look now (square with slight rounded corners).And since Vista, Windows has had a feature to save all current software states that are open, but the software needs to support the feature. So once again Apple are copying Windows with Lion. I'm sure by the time Win 8 is out Apple will have ripped off a ton of it's features with small updates to OSX. Just like they have done in the past when MS demo stuff many months before release.
Exodite - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
A good question would be why we have to restart our computers at all in the year 2012.It's not as if unloading and replacing even the kernel itself is some sort of unimaginable witchcraft.
FaaR - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Try a SSD as your system disk. Windows Update patching is tremendously faster this way, and system shutdowns/restarts are of course a lot faster as well.Not to mention all the other stuff that's also vastly accelerated by a SSD, and all this to a much lower cost than a full replacement PC system.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Yeah, rebooting at work really s*cks. However, I just set Win 7 to "automatically download and manually install updates", so the nagging about needed a reboot starts only after I press the "update now" button. Works OK for me.MrS
DanNeely - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Stop the presses. DailyTech has much better coverage of this than AnandTech does; all the old don't do anything until I tell you to options are still there.http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=23289
jwcalla - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
This is one thing about Windows that just grates on me. And I just don't understand why Microsoft refuses to take it seriously.Package management and software and system updates are areas that Ubuntu does much better than Windows IMO.
RoboJ1M - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Agreed, there's certain things I can't stand about Windows now I've used Ubuntu at home.And I think by far my biggest gripe is the updates.
I mean, sod restarts, how about EVERY SINGLE application requiring it's own personal in-RAM-with-status-icon update manager.
So, every time you log in it takes 30 minutes to boot and a dozen balloons pop up telling you there is a new version of mickey-mouse-soft-7 out.
Add to that trying to explain how to keep your machine up to date and secure to your parents and other people who aren't very computer literate. Then it's 5 hours of spam and malware cleaning because they haven't updated anything in 12 months.
Ubuntu --> Click the update button. Updates done. Requires a restart maybe once a month.
Though to be honest now that I've just stuck Ubuntu on my Dad's PC he still doesn't run the updates but I wrote him a manual and he can browse the web without it breaking every six months.
*written from my Windows 7 machine with 19 updates that fail to install and roll back every morning I come into work* (apparently it's something to do with SQL Express)
niva - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
There are patch and kernel updates that do require restarts in linux as well, every 6 months you're getting a new rev too which require a total reinstall unless you're brave enough to attempt an upgrade or stick with an LTS.I'm using both windows and linux and frankly MS has gotten better over the years while linux has started having more of these issues. My guess is that we're at pretty much optimal state now.
gevorg - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
Great, add another feature to disable after installing fresh Windows. I hope it won't be like UAC hell in Vista.brucek2 - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
I hate to say it, but these forced reboots are probably saving me in the long run, although that's not due to any fixes from Microsoft. My gut tells me the worst sources of security and stability issues on my system are all Flash. And the Adobe flash updater won't even notify you of an update except upon reboot -- which basically never happens any more, except due to these forced ones from Microsoft.Its bad enough those Flash guys deliver such horribly buggy software, but it really bugs me that as the provider of the software that most desperately needs frequent, real-time upgrades, they have one of the least sophisticated upgrade processes out there.
ET - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Hear hear. And if the internet connection isn't up yet when I okay the install it simply fails and another reboot is required.Frankly, I don't want reboots at all. I tend to postpone updates a lot because of them. If that option isn't available in Windows 8, that would be a step back for me. I had really hoped they'd get rid of the need to reboot.
Then again, wasn't there something about reboots in Windows 8 restoring things to how they were? If that's the case then I can certainly live with them.
kjboughton - Monday, November 14, 2011 - link
"Intalling" updates?Looks like MS needs to use a spell checker.
Shanevo - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I was wondering when somebody was going to see that. I hope that was a slide made by anandtech for the sake of this article and not a MS mistake.Andrew.a.cunningham - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Bahaha, nope, that's all Microsoft. This is pre-release software, after all. :-)Filiprino - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Microsoft is years behind modern OSes like GNU/Linux or Mac OS. The only reboots needed should be when you upgarde your kernell, if at all. And of course without stupid waits watching a "Configuring your updates..." notice before continuing updating.tommo123 - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
is there a way to disable what is essentially a crash? i mean to the user (me in this case) if my pc reboots during the night it makes no odds whether it's a crash or due to windows updates. it's the same thing IMOnow there's a way to disable it (iirc the auto reboot is enabled by default on win7)
if there's no option to pause it or anything either, then i'd have to disable windows update and only run it when i am about to reboot anyway. video encoding takes a long time and i'm not gonna interrupt a 2-3 day long encode and start again because MS wants to remove options and "appleify" things for me.
jabber - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Can we speed up .NET updates? Some of them seem to take longer to install than a full re-install of Win7.piroroadkill - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
They need to work on patch sizes, and patches being superceded.It fucking blows when you download a big patch..
Check windows update again.. and there are more patches for the patches you just got. This should never, ever happen.
You should never, ever have to check Windows Update several times in a row to get new updates. It should show all updates, which should have all the latest security patches rolled in.
Make them differential, if needs be, like Xbox live patches - they're wonderful and quick.
Microsoft still has a long way to go with Windows Update.
burntham77 - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Restarts are barely an issue when you use an SSD for your OS. Well, not for me.EddyKilowatt - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
Didn't the malware scammers recently crack the Update channel... or at least do some good social engineering with an authentic-looking pop-up Update box?The whole thing just seems so ripe for abuse. I've got all updates set to manual, notify only. I let the Microsoft ones through pretty quickly, but everything else gets kept on ice for several days while I listen for word on the street of any big problems...
All that said, why is it taking so long for Windows to get modular enough that services can be restarted without rebooting the kernel?
B3an - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - link
How can certain critical system code be updated when it's already running and in memory? A restart is always needed for this.jabber - Tuesday, November 15, 2011 - link
I hate it when I build a new box or rebuild one and suddenly after doing other stuff waiting for 105 updates to install I realise that its been sat for 40 minutes half way though asking me if I want to install IE!!!!!!I selected the update just f**king install it.
What dont you get about 'automatic'?
windows - Monday, November 21, 2011 - link
Windows 8 machines will require a restart only when security updates requiring a restart are installed... When one or more updates does require a PC restart, <a href="http://windows7vswindows8.com/2011/windows-7-vs-wi... 8 </a> will alert users in a message on the log-in screen that persists for three days.