Reboot required after installing drivers

[lmop]

I got my SpaceNavigator this weekend and was greatly concerned when it didn't appear to work. Then I remembered that drivers tend to need a reboot to register with the kernel properly. Fortunately that fixed things and I had an entertaining time playing around with Google SketchUp and other projects.

Anyway, whilst Apple do say that a reboot is generally necessary, in this technote: "Installing an I/O Kit KEXT Without Rebooting", they also say that it is possible not to require one in some circumstances. You might want to consider enhancing your installer to include this functionality so that your users don't unnecessarily have to suffer the indignity of restarting their system.

[flomotan]

Thanks for the suggestion and the link to the technote. We did look at removing the reboot requirement but found that we really need it.

With Leopard just around the corner, we're again reviewing this to see if we can remove the requirement under that OS

[ettore]

so that your users don't unnecessarily have to suffer the indignity of restarting their system.

I feel your pain, I hate to restart too. Not trying to justifying anything, but anyway this happens frequently even with Apple updates. Take the recent QuickTime 7.1.5 software update, it required a restart and that's for just a minor dot-dot release update of something that is above the kernel layer.

[gfriend]

Please let people know - at the start of the install - that restart will be required. (It's inconvenient to just find out at the end... and have to quit all other apps.)
Thanks,
Gil