December 1st, 2005
Microsoft Touts Restart Manager in Vista; No More Reboots?
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
One of my peeves when updating software, and especially drivers or the operating system, is the reboot. You update something, and you get a message that the system needs to restart in order to complete the update. Microsoft hasn’t been promoting this new feature much, but the Vista Restart Manager is supposed to allow updates without requiring a reboot.
“If a part of an application, or the operating system itself, needs to updated, the Installer will call the Restart Manager, which looks to see if it can clear that part of the system so that it can be updated. If it can do that, it does, and that happens without a reboot,” he (Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft’s platform products and services division) said.
“If you have to reboot, then what happens is that the system, together with the applications, takes a snapshot of the state: the way things are on the screen at that very moment, and then it just updates and restarts the application, or in the case of an operating system update, it will bring the operating system back exactly where it was,” Allchin said. Source: eWeek
We Say: So it still might need a reboot, but it’ll do the equivalent of a Standby or Hibernate when it does. Better than now, but not perfect. I’m not sure what would happen if you were in the middle of a download or a file copy, but perhaps some beta testers (braver than I) can illuminate us on that. One thing this feature might do is might stop my Macintosh pundit friends from constantly harping about their OS and reboots. I’ve had friends tell me their OS does not need to reboot after an update or install (but I’ve used a Mac, and I know it does, sometimes).
Dave Barnes says:
Well, I have to reboot my PowerMac often after a software update from Apple. (Not for applications, but for Mac OS X).
The difference for me is the time is takes to reboot. My PowerMac (1.8 GHz) and my Windows Athlon (1.8GHz) differ dramatically in this regard. About 3 to 1 in my non-scientfic estimation. That is, the Mac OS X machine reboots in 1/3 the time of the Windows machine.
What is also interesting about this is that my Windows machine has a much simpler setup than my Mac as I only use the Windows machine for testing. I have removed a lot of software from my Windows machine.
,dave
December 1st, 2005 at 8:39 pm
Josef says:
My Linux desktops need no reboots when I update something but I still need to restart the app that gets updated - if it is running at that moment. But I obviously have to restart when I get a new kernel but it is not “forced” upon me.
December 2nd, 2005 at 6:01 am
ikaruga says:
Ditto, Josef. Linux has had that “feature” for quite sometime now. All that’s usually needed is an app reboot, even for system drivers like video, audio, etc.. The only difference is that there has been no “restart manager.” But I wouldn’t be surprised if the Linux folks bring us something like that in response to Vista.
December 2nd, 2005 at 6:31 am
Omari says:
Hey Josef and ikaruga–
In some distros, apps will automatically be restarted if you perform an update. For example if you update your SSH package, scripts will run that will automatically shut down the SSH daemon and then restart it. Doing this for, say, updates to your Firefox package would not be a huge stretch. Linux doesn’t need a “restart manager.” Just sounds like more bloat that will make Windows even more complex.
December 2nd, 2005 at 7:07 am
Al says:
The eWeek article is 2 years old and the link in it to MSDN no longer exists. Kind of dated material.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:54 am