Hi Richie, You should be forced to reboot your Mac after some system updates - the system update program will leave a dialogue that doesn't give you much choice.
Vickie's advise is good, you should be able to 'reboot' VO only to get it back. From Linux systems I'm used to their very modular application design, where you can happily start and stop almost any service (program) without rebooting. I've even upgraded the whole OS in Debian from version 3 to 4 without a reboot. Very useful for servers. OSX is based on Free BSD, which is not that dissimilar from Linux (but a million miles from the monolithic Windows). That is why I was surprised you'd have to reboot after a system upgrade. Generally though, there shouldn't be any difference between rebooting, and check what programs are running and stopping them. At least, that's how I think it works! Cheers, -Alastair
