Why close all other applications before running the installer?

Question

Most Windows installers have a recommendation to "close all other applications before continuing." I can imagine that this may have been necessary in older versions of windows. And this may be for a small number of installations now. But, of course, this is not required for most installations. It?

I am creating an installer for my own (rather simple) application now, and I think that, as I suspect, many others are in front of me - "it cannot do much harm and is better safe than sorry." But, on the other hand, I do not want inconvenience to people for no reason. So is there any reason to say that?

Answer 1

Only if you are going to update some file (most likely, dll and / or .exe), which is shared / shared (for example, in \ windows \ system32).

If so, either close the applications, or you will have to reboot to complete the installation.

Answer 2

Agree and disagree with answetr fromn ofir. Most likely, this is due to the need to ensure that when editing or changing registry files during installation, but I would very much doubt that it has anything to do with antivirus software. As stated, very few people would like to install software that would require someone to deactivate their antivirus. Although many applications currently only need to close all instances of the same program or those that use shared files, unless they require a system reboot, and this will basically be to ensure that the work will not be saved and thus the reboot is lost.

Answer 3

There are usually not many reasons, but most installers install DLLs and / or make registry or other changes that may be affected or executed by other applications.

In particular, antivirus software can block files that your installer does not expect to block (including your new files) - at least it makes sense to ask the user to disable this type of software.

Answer 4

Most likely, just to release resource locks that are required by the installer, which can be currently used by some other running application, and there may also be some other reasons for this.

thanks