Be Installed You Must Restart Your Computer Top - Windivert Driver Cannot

In the dimly lit glow of a home office, was deep into a late-night coding session, putting the final touches on a custom network filtering tool. Everything seemed perfect until a single notification popped up, halting progress: "windivert driver cannot be installed you must restart your computer."

Then restart your PC.

Steps:

If restarting hasn't worked, you can usually break the cycle manually: Kill Stuck Services Command Prompt as Administrator In the dimly lit glow of a home

• Windows SFC corruption – run sfc /scannow and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
• Hyper-V or WSL2 conflicts – disable Hyper-V network virtualization temporarily.
• Antivirus with permanent driver lockdown – try clean boot installation.

Repeat for any other WinDivert entries. Then restart and reinstall. Windows SFC corruption – run sfc /scannow and

1. Go to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery.
2. Under Advanced startup, click Restart now.
3. After reboot, choose Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Startup Settings.
4. Click Restart, then press 7 or F7 for “Disable driver signature enforcement”.
5. Install your WinDivert app while enforcement is off.
6. Reboot normally – the driver will remain loaded.

• A previous version of the driver is partially loaded but pending deletion.
• A system file is in use by another process (like a VPN or firewall that crashed earlier).
• Windows is in a "pending restart" state from a previous update or software installation.