Applies to: Sophos Home for Windows
You receive a message during installation stating “Sophos Home cannot be installed until your computer is restarted”
Cause
This error usually appears due to a pending reboot flag in the Windows Registry. Typically, a reboot should clear the error.
It may also be caused by leftovers from previous installations. or by trying to install Sophos Home on an outdated OS.
Instructions
If you are still seeing the message after rebooting your computer, please follow the steps below to remove the reboot flag from your registry:
Note: As a precautionary measure, it is highly recommended to create a backup of the Windows system registry before doing the steps below.
- Ensure Windows is up-to-date
- Turn off Tamper protection
- Click on the Start button
. - Type regedit then press Enter. Click Yes if prompted to allow the application to make changes to the computer.
- Browse to the following:
- 32-bit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Sophos\AutoUpdate\UpdateStatus\VolatileFlags
- 64-bit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Sophos\AutoUpdate\UpdateStatus\VolatileFlags
- Double-click on the entry RebootRequired and change the value to 0.
- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Session Manager.
- Rename the entry PendingFileRenameOperations to OldPendingFileRenameOperations.
Note:
If the flags are not present, and you are still receiving the message, there are likely leftover files present from a previous Sophos installation. Follow this article – Option 3 – to fully remove Sophos from the computer, and then re-install.
- Clear the contents of the %windir%\Temp folder (This is typically C:\Windows\temp)
- Re-install Sophos Home