Every now and again, we get a post in the forums asking what this means and how to fix it. Well, finally, here is your answer.

Alternate to the rest of the tutorial, you can just reboot your computer if you don't have BYOND set to open on start-up. If you'd rather not reboot your computer, do read on.

In order to successfully update the software, all programs associated with BYOND (with exception to the installer itself) need to be closed. Windows has a cry when you override files or attempt to modify them if another program is currently running. To let you know about this, the BYOND installer informs you. Screenshot

First thing you should do, is exit all BYOND applications. This is sometimes not as easy as it sounds. But we'll get into that later on. First things first, check your start bar and make sure there are no Dream Seeker instances running. If that's the all clear, now it's time to close off the BYOND.exe and if it's running DreamDaemon.exe. Screenshot

Go down to your task bar, right click both of them, and select Exit. Screenshot

If you check your task bar and you don't see the pager or DreamDaemon running, be weary, sometimes Windows likes to hide things from you.

If neither are showing, and you're sure you didn't close them, click on the little arrow next to the task bar. Screenshot.

From there, several "inactive" icons will appear, hopefully the Pager and/or DreamDaemon will now be visible. Screenshot.

Right click and close off these programs, as instructed above.

Now click the Retry button and see if BYOND will now run the package. If all's well, stop reading here, you're done!. Otherwise, keep reading.

If you've followed the above and you're still getting messages about BYOND running. That means somewhere along the way, you've picked up a rogue process. The best thing we can do is kill it.

You all remember that little trick to unfreeze things? Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up task manager (note if you're in Vista or using a specific configuration of Windows XP, you'll be asked what you want to do: click on the "Task Manager" option). Once Task Manager is open, Click the "Applications" Tab and make sure nothing about BYOND is there. If it is, click on "End Task". Afterwards, click on the "Processes" tab. (Note: Ending a process' task doesn't save any data if you're using DreamMaker. It's best to save and exit that manually.) Screenshot

The processes tab will display all programs that are currently running on your computer. See if you can find any related to BYOND. The easiest way to do that is click on the "Image Name" header, it will put them in alphabetical order. Screenshot

After you have done that, click the Retry button on your launcher again. If that fails, BYOND will come up with the message "BYOND is still running, shall I kill it for you?" To which, you can just reply "Yes" and the program will kill all BYOND related processes. Screenshot

Please remember: DreamMaker is also a BYOND process and needs to be closed before the program can update itself.

(Please Note: Task Manager is not a toy. Only fool around in it if you know for sure what programs you're closing off.)