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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

One thing I've wondered about Windows is why it needs to be rebooted so often?

I can understand for stuff like Service Pack updates or patches to the kernel but it seems whenever I boot Windows 7 it wants to do a bunch of updates that inevitably require a full restart, sometimes this also triggers more updates so a further restart is required.

I've even installed stuff which seems like simple userspace software and have it demand a full power cycle upon completing the install.

Is there an actual intelligent reason for this, or is it just a throwback to earlier versions of Windows and hasn't been fixed yet?

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Unlike most filesystems, the windows filesystem doesn't allow you to overwrite files that are open. To be 100% sure that you can install all your files everyone checks the box that says require a reboot and install on startup when the file wont be in use.

> seems like simple userspace software

It probably isn't.

An example would be Windows Media Player. Every single update I've ever done to that program has required a restart. I can't fathom why that would be required.

The media player is what renders all the little movie thumbnails in Explorer. So it's got hooks in the OS. (Not to mention all the DRM cruft, that's probably down at the driver level.)

The DRM I guess is understandable (if annoying). The thumbnail functionality surely could be done by simply restarting explorer.

explorer is the same program that runs the desktop. They still could get away with just restarting explorer, but that erases your state and makes everything look broke for a few moments.

I don't know why they do it this way, but nautilus is the same way so I guess there is some reason.

Actually this may not be the case. I was doing some testing recently where I happened to have 32-bit codecs for a video format I was using, but did not have 64-bit codecs. Media player could play the file, but explorer could not thumbnail them. Media player is 32-bit, whereas explorer is 64-bit. After installing 64-bit codecs, the explorer thumbnails worked.

This would suggest that the thumbnailing is not done by media player.

Explorer works like an alternative player when creating the thumbnails, so it can use the same codecs as media player. You could have only the codecs and remove media player, and thumbnails still should work.

There is a 64-bit media player, it's just not the default, maybe due to lack of 3rd-party 64-bit codecs at the time. To make it default: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-w...

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