Why does uninstalling FFXIV require a computer restart?

[worldofneil]

why does FFXIV require my computer to restart itself after the game is uninstalled?

It doesn't

It should not be so embedded into the operating system that it requires a restart in order to remove itself from my computer.

It's not

So why does it tell you to reboot? Simply because it's good advice for Windows after uninstalling any program, especially if you're planning on reinstalling it again. Although it's unlikely for this game, even with Windows Vista that was still around at the time the installer for this game was released, it's the only way to be 100% sure something isn't still locking a file and it's an easy thing for Square Enix to say if it saves them any related technical support requests, especially with current computers where reboots usually take a few minutes at most.

I would say that a quick reboot isn't usually much of an inconvenience to someone, but if you're reinstalling quite often, that's unusual behaviour to most players?

If you were wondering the game doesn't even need to be installed, it just needs the game files copied anywhere. Obviously you'd have to install it once to unpack the game files, but after that it can even be run from a USB drive.

The only location that is fixed is the folder it creates in your Documents\My Games folder which it stores the character settings/gearsets/hotbars and temporary files while patching.

Hope this is of some help!

[Krojack]

It doesn't
Simply because it's good advice for Windows after uninstalling any program

Which is bad OS design.

[cheolsu]

Which is bad OS design.

if only ffxiv ran well on something besides windows -.-