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I'm installing SQL server 2008 R2, and I have got this dialog box on the screen:

"You must restart the computer to complete SQL Server Setup"

It just has an "OK" button.

I am on a box which has active paying customers and I DO NOT want to restart the box now. Will pressing the OK button reboot the box automatically?

Please only answers from experience of this specific message, not conjecture of what would be good practice.

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  • What version of Windows Server? 2k3 and 2k8 shouldn't allow the system to suspend without popping up a dialog box, regardless of what is being installed. May 25, 2011 at 15:32
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    What happened when you did this in a test environment before trying it on a live server with paying customers?
    – MDMarra
    May 25, 2011 at 15:34

2 Answers 2

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Not for nothing, but you shouldn't be doing any kind of maintenance on a box that has active paying customers on it unless you've scheduled and announced a maintenance window.
Installing new software can break things, and customers tend to become unhappy when things they're paying for break.

In the future you should review the installation documentation (Microsoft has a wealth of this on their website) for potential negative effects like having to reboot, and ideally you would test on a development box before you start touching production hardware.


To answer your question, the only safe thing to do at this point is baby-sit the machine until you reach a window where it can be restarted without annoying your customers. I would not click the "OK" button until you are ready to restart since even if it doesn't trigger an immediate reboot it may inform Windows that a reboot is required (and Windows has a bad habit of popping up those "Your computer will be rebooted in X minutes if you don't tell me to stop" boxes once it's been told it needs to reboot).

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    Even then it's not completely safe...I've had some software where underlying libraries were changed and it started making other things act a little goofy until it was rebooted. May 25, 2011 at 15:35
  • Thanks, that was my inclination too. I do understand and accept your more general points but obviously there is an associated cost with taking these extra precautions and I'm happy with that trade-off.
    – Andy
    May 25, 2011 at 15:36
  • @Bart I've had things continue to be goofy AFTER rebooting and had to back out changes because of newly-introduced-and-undocumented behavior. Fun times - like having your hand amputated with a staple remover!
    – voretaq7
    May 25, 2011 at 15:43
  • Yeah, but you expect bad things to happen after rebooting Windows unless you're new :-) May 25, 2011 at 15:54
  • I expect bad things to happen after rebooting ANYTHING - you never know when someone forgot to change the IPs in /etc/rc.conf after a major renumbering :-)
    – voretaq7
    May 25, 2011 at 15:57
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Just in case anyone else ever finds themselves in the same situation, you'll be relieved to know that as expected you can safely press the OK button - the server doesn't restart itself. There was also another dialog from the SQL server installer which I can't remember the wording but it was something like "changes have been made which require the server to be restarted" which also has just an OK button but which is also safe.

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