Microsoft Corp. is working on a significant new feature for Windows
Vista, known as Restart Manager, which is designed to update parts of
the operating system or applications without having to reboot the
entire machine. Microsoft officials have not talked much publicly about this
new feature, but Jim Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft's platform
products and services division, recently told eWEEK that this is an
example of just how important the reboot issue was to the Redmond-based
software giant.
"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 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.
"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 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.
News source: eWeek
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