Monday, June 8, 2009

Important notice to installing CAD (and not only CAD) applications.

Many OS add-ons and also the automatic updates of the Windows operating system (Windows Update, Microsoft Update service) require to perform a restart of the system after the installation (update) is finished. In this way, the changed files (mostly DLL libraries) can be loaded and integrated into the running system.

This necessary restart can be postponed and it usually occurs naturally with the everyday power-off and power-on cycle of your computer. But many users do not switch off their computers at all - they just put them into sleep mode (hibernate). And so the postponed restart can be delayed even by several days.

There are some risks hidden in this routine - you'll postpone possibly urgent security fixes for your OS and there is one more problem. If you install other applications on such "not yet updated" system - e.g. CAD software - the next restart may render non-consistent versions of system libraries and the application may behave in a non-standard way.

Therefore always make sure that your system is not in the postponed-reset mode before you install a new software. When you are prompted to restart, do so and perform the restart as soon as possible. Do not hide the restart reminder dialog, do not stop the update service.

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