Hot patching

"Hot patching

One of my own personal favorites is the hot patching feature that allows you to patch your system binaries even if they are currently in use. By actually patching the binaries in memory, this new feature will significantly reduce the number of reboots required for hotfixes. You will still need to reboot after updating kernel-level binaries, but as always, the fewer reboots the better."
From http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/312

Is this technology actually being used? I still have to reboot my pc after WindowsUpdate installs new updates and I don't think we've seen a kernel update every month.

I would also like to know the answer to this

We've heard this since Longhorn. "We took reboot out of the code, you should notice less reboots with Longhorn". That never happened in Vista, and it looks like the same story with Windows 7.

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/DanielMoth/Restart-Manager-in-Vista-for-developers/

It seems to work for drivers. Storage subsystem drivers still want you to reboot though... but graphics drivers don't

Dodo said:

It seems to work for drivers. Storage subsystem drivers still want you to reboot though... but graphics drivers don't

Agreed in vista and newer, most sound and video drivers do not seem to need reboots but Most windows updates do.   This was really pushed for Vista, Server 08 but it seems like its not really used.

Dodo said:

It seems to work for drivers. Storage subsystem drivers still want you to reboot though... but graphics drivers don't

That's a different beast. Graphics drivers don't require a reboot because starting with Vista it is possible to restart them. You can try that for yourself: go to device manager and disable the video driver. Notice how the screen goes blank (and you might see a text mode cursor flashing) and after a while the desktop reappears but using the generic software driver. And of course, you can re-enable it and get back to normal hardware accelerated mode.

As for hot patching: not all updates support hot patching and it's enough only one update that doesn't support hot patching for a reboot to be required. And I'm not even sure it applies to client version of Windows, all information I've seen on hot patching talks about server versions.

Dexter said:

Dodo said:

*snip*

That's a different beast. Graphics drivers don't require a reboot because starting with Vista it is possible to restart them. You can try that for yourself: go to device manager and disable the video driver. Notice how the screen goes blank (and you might see a text mode cursor flashing) and after a while the desktop reappears but using the generic software driver. And of course, you can re-enable it and get back to normal hardware accelerated mode.

As for hot patching: not all updates support hot patching and it's enough only one update that doesn't support hot patching for a reboot to be required. And I'm not even sure it applies to client version of Windows, all information I've seen on hot patching talks about server versions.

 

Pretty sure that nVidia still asks for a reboot. ATI does not anymore, only during uninstallation.

intelman said:

Dexter said:

*snip*

Pretty sure that nVidia still asks for a reboot. ATI does not anymore, only during uninstallation.

Could be. I only have ATI cards .