I just read a blog post whick talks about a very nice small tool: WhyReboot?.
Helas for us, often when we install a new application on a Windows system, the last message is: “To complete the installation, Windows must be rebooted“. In fact, it’s not the OS itself which requires this operation but the installation program. It schedule actions to be performed at boot time such as:
- Delete temporary files,
- copy / move /rename files,
- delete unused registry entries,
- or execute “Run once” applications.
The goal of this small tool is just to analyse the registry and reports what will be performed during the next reboot. Now, you can safely decide if you can reboot the system later or now (and even perform the scheduled operations manually).