In the most user-hostile move ever, I wanted to disable the "automatic restart in 15 minutes" thing on Windows 8 (Home). It required adding a registry key(!) I hope there's an easier way that I just somehow missed...
Really, really, horrible experience.
During the beta phase, they had mentioned that updates wouldn't do that, that they would auto apply the next time you rebooted.
I really think that all they should do is display a message that says, "New security updates have been installed. To ensure your computer is secure, please reboot your computer."
Not that I'm apologizing it's behavior - it was a design decision that Windows team made in the past, when it was deemed not important and worth reduction in complexity. Now just it comes and bites them back.
You can perform hot updates to a system but it can be complex and there are a number of restrictions on the types of updates that can be done.
Not exactly. Its up to the application which opens files to control whether the file can be modified externally. It can do this in two ways. (1) Open the file in some FILE_SHARE_* mode and let the OS sort it out. (2) use opportunistic locks that will detect external access and then let the app decide how to react - anti-virus programs use this when they are scanning files.
>That's the cause of most reboots, it will replace them before services or apps that use them start again.
Actually the cause for reboots is much more mundane. Files replaced on disks means new programs using those files get the new version, however, processes which are already running keep using the older version in memory and are thus open to being exploited by bugs that are already patched.
On servers, things are a bit different. To prevent downtime you can 'hotpatch' the update and thus avoid the reboot.
The problem Microsoft is balancing against is people who never ever reboot their computers no matter what--and thus never update, and become infection vectors. They have to force these people to update against their will to ensure the digital equivalent of herd immunity. And it's really quite hard to tell whether the user trying to "permanently" dismiss the "REBOOT NOW GOSH DARNIT" popup really has something urgent they're doing, or is just a "power user" who thinks they know better than the computer.