A long time ago I think I read that if something else is open at the time of installing a program then the installer will treat that program as part of the program it’s installing and therefore will remove it if and when you decide to un-install.
I must have mis-read or mis-remembered that because it seems too unlikely. Surely an installation app just has a file list of what is part of the installation and what isn’t. And surely OSs are now clever and sophisticated enough to let some software install while other software is running.
So why is it strongly reccomended that you close all programs before installing?
a few reasons:
Gives more available memory to the install application reducing disk swapping.
Avoids losing your work should an install require a shutdown and restart.
Avoids any issues of installing or updating system files that may be “in use” by another app.
decreases the likelyhood of errors, as well as decreases the fragmenting of install files caused by changing swap file size.
As noted, closing other programs can prevent some installation problems. However, in practice I often do not close other programs and never have a problem with installation.
The “strongly recommended” advisory has become standard boilerplate for installation programs and is included regardless of whether it is really important or not.
Right. It’s a sort of CYA in case something else gets messed up, they warned you. As it is, your average citizen running WinXP has so many programs running “in the background” that he doesn’t know of, that it really is more a warning of “close the dial-up connections, the web pages, and the Office documents and pay attention to THIS”.
Another issue (and why many installers are now specifically telling you disable any virus scanners rather than “all programs” before continuing) - a virus scanner MAY register a false positive and prevent the installer from installing the files it needs, which could result in a blown install of the program. It is highly unlikely, yes, but if you have happened to monkey with your virus scanner default settings and cranked up the “Hueristic” scanning (an attempt by the virus scanners to find new viruses not in the database by matching file and drive activity to known patterns of other other viruses) for instance, it is more likely.
Also, if what you’re installing is a “plug-in” or an “add-on” to an existing program (Google Toolbar for IE, for example), you will most likely have to shut down all instances of that program before the installation can continue, so there won’t be any sharing violations or file protection issues during the install.
A currently-running program may be using a component that the installation needs to upgrade.
Example: Say you’re currently running a Visual-Basic-6.x-based program (which uses MSVBVM60.DLL) while you’re attempting to install another Visual-Basic-6.x-based program that requires an updated version of that same DLL. The installation program won’t be able to upgrade that DLL directly because it’s currently in use by the first program.
(Note that with modern versions of windows and current installation programs this is taken care of automatically - the installation program just puts the upgraded version of the component in a special folder, informs Windows that this particular component should be upgraded as part of the next reboot, and then tells you that you’ll have to reboot Windoes to complete the installation. No biggie, but you’d have been able to avoid that reboot if you hadn’t been running the other application during your install.)
I’m curious. Could you point out what programs is XP running on my machine aside from the apps. I, myself, directly opened? More importantly, how much memory do they require and how useful are they? Assuming they are not, will a quick de-install completely get rid of them?