Process Restart Prevention section of Manage Conflicting Processes in Patch My PC Publisher

Applies to: Patch My PC Publisher V3.x Available at level: All Custom Products, All Products, Vendor, Product Available on tab: WSUS Updates, ConfigMgr Apps, Intune Apps, Intune Updates

Important

This article has not been updated for Version 3.x. Once it has, this banner will be removed.

The Process Restart Prevention option prevents the end user from reopening the application whilst the update is in progress. This helps avoid scenarios where the application is closed for the update but immediately relaunched, which could cause the installation to fail or be delayed.

This option is only available at the Product level and should be used for applications where restarting the process during installation is likely to interfere with a successful update.

Important

This setting is not recommended in most scenarios due to the potential for user disruption and residual system changes if the update process does not complete cleanly.

For some applications, such as Google Chrome, enabling this setting can prevent the application from updating. These applications rely on helper processes or self update mechanisms that must be able to launch during the update process. Blocking the executable using Image File Execution Options can interfere with this behavior and cause the update to fail consistently.

How the setting works

When Prevent the end user from opening an application while the application is updating is enabled, Patch My PC uses the Windows Image File Execution Options feature to block the application from launching.

A temporary registry entry is created for the application executable under the Image File Execution Options path. If the user attempts to launch the application during the update, they may see a message such as:

"An update is currently being installed on your computer. Please do not try to start the application"

or

"The requested operation requires elevation"

Potential Risk

If the ScriptRunner process is forcefully terminated or exits unexpectedly, the Image File Execution Options registry entries may not be cleaned up correctly. When this occurs, users may continue to see the blocking message even though no installation or update is actively running. If this happens, the registry entry for the affected process must be removed manually.

Depending on the operating system architecture and the application being blocked, you may need to check one or both of the following registry paths:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options

Look for subkeys named after the blocked executable, such as notepad++.exe.

Note

When Patch My PC ScriptRunner executes on a device, it checks for legacy Image File Execution Options entries that were created by previous Patch My PC update attempts that were not cleaned up correctly. If these entries are detected, ScriptRunner will remove them automatically.

This cleanup only occurs when another Patch My PC application or update is executed on the device. If no further Patch My PC deployments run, the stale registry entries may remain in place.

For this reason, if users are blocked from launching an application due to leftover Image File Execution Options entries, a manual registry cleanup or PowerShell based remediation is often required to immediately restore application access.

PowerShell-based Remediation

If required, the following PowerShell commands can be used to locate and remove all Image File Execution Options entries created by Patch My PC ScriptRunner for process blocking:

Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options" -ea SilentlyContinue |
Where-Object {
    if ($_.Property -contains "Debugger") {
        ($_ | Get-ItemProperty).Debugger -like "*PreventStart*"
    }
} | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse;

Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options" -ea SilentlyContinue |
Where-Object {
    if ($_.Property -contains "Debugger") {
        ($_ | Get-ItemProperty).Debugger -like "*PreventStart*"
    }
} | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse;