We’re well into the 21st century, and it’s been almost six years since Microsoft first documented how to install drivers and applications without annoying users, in the MSDN article Best Practices: Avoid Reboots During Install. This information also appears in Windows Logo Handbook—BackOffice Requirements (see page 39), and several other locations.

Yet right now, I’m just installing an FCC database that uses ESRI’s Arc Explorer 2.0 to allow searches of commercially licensed radio and television broadcast antennas, cellular phone towers, Licensing Market boundaries, and other useful information—and it’s telling me that I must reboot before I can use the program.

Even as recently as December 2001, Microsoft described Installing Drivers and Utilities without Rebooting on Windows.

Why is it, then, that ESRI forces users to suffer this needless reboot? It is time-consuming, forces you to interrupt anything you are working on, and then restore it all when the installation is complete. This frequently happens to me just when I have a bunch of browser windows open with carefully constructed searches and search results open, and there is no good way to save the current state of such research.

So ESRI, I challenge you to fix this annoying bug. It shouldn’t take more than 2 months.