Installing Precautions

Roy Thomson · From: Wolfville, Nova Scotia,Canada

I note that when installing new software
you are always prompted to ensure that
there are no programs running in the background.
Does this mean going to "misconfig" and
disabling all programs during installation?
I have not been doing this because I always
thought it referred just to any programs that I may have been USING at the time.
I use a PC OS W2000
Thanks everyone for your attention.

[This message was edited by Roy Thomson on 03 October 2004 at 10:13 AM.]

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

No, those little background utilities should not cause installer problems. That phrase comes from a boilerplate used by most InstallShield-based installer scripts. The precaution is there prmarily to give the installer more memory to work with. If, for example, you were running Paint Shop Pro with half-a-dozen photographic scans open, the installer in theory might not have enough memory to do its job.

This is much less of a problem if you're using Windows 2000 or XP. These newer operating systems have very good memory management. They isolate programs in memory, and can move whole sessions from RAM to disk as needed. But if the installer were to crash (it happens!), the data in your open program could be lost. So it's still a good idea to close your applications before starting an install, just to avoid losing any data you were working on.

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Roy Thomson · From: Wolfville, Nova Scotia,Canada

Interesting!
Thanks for the input.
I have read though where it is best to
disable Norton Anti Virus as it could
block certain files when installing new software.
However I really don't know. Anyone have
any further comments on the issue at hand?

Chris Collins · From: Oban, Argyll, Scotland, United Kingdom

Hi Roy,

Shutting off anti-virus software is the real point here because it may stop some important file installation / changes. Its a good idea to virus check the disk / file that the program is on with an up to date virus scanner first though. Apart from that all I do is to shut down running progrms by right clicking the small icons in the system tray (bottm right of the screen) and choosing the exit option for each of them. They will still restart up again after you reboot with no problem. If you were to close down the running programs using MSCONFIG then you would have to reboot before it would take effect and remember to go back into MSCONFIG to put them back!!. The other thing to do (and a lot of people don't) is to back up your registry first so you have a fall back if some of the settings installed by the newly installed program cause problems to your system. If you are running win XP or ME then create a restore point.

Hope that helps

Chris

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