# Installation Complete! You must now restart your computer... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 3, 2000, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/installation-complete-you-must-now-restart-your-computer/43826 "2000-12-03T15:04:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2000, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/installation-complete-you-must-now-restart-your-computer/43826/21 "2000-12-06T04:34:54Z")
Uniball wrote: > [@](#): > > There’s a large number of reasons for the reboot, depending on the program. The most common one are registry issues, activation of new DLLs, memory usage and, above all, inicialization of new versions of the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. Win2k is back to using autoexec.bat and config.sys files? WinNT doesn’t have them, and 2k is just the new version of NT, so I am very surprised to learn that they’ve brought them back. ---
**Author:** ![jrishaw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5fc32e/32.png) [@jrishaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jrishaw)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2000, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/installation-complete-you-must-now-restart-your-computer/43826/22 "2000-12-06T06:57:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by astro \* > \*\*Why? > > In order to work properly, complex installed software programs need to re-initialize with the new drivers and various other software components in place and integrated into the system registery. The system needs to reboot for the changes to the registery etc to become active and for the program components to be recognized and load correctly. > \*\* Not once in my 10 years administering UNIX systems have I had to “reboot” after installing a program or package. Maybe Microsoft should have done it the right way to begin with, eh. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/installation-complete-you-must-now-restart-your-computer/43826.md?page=1)