New Windows 11 build adds self-healing “quick machine recovery” feature

[6Foot2]

Link: New Windows 11 build adds self-healing “quick machine recovery” feature - Ars Technica

 

Quote

Microsoft is adding a new recovery mode to Windows to help revive crashing PCs. Called quick machine recovery (QMR), this technology enables Windows 11 PCs to boot into the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE, also used by Windows install media and IT shops for various recovery and diagnostic purposes), connect to the Internet, and download Microsoft-provided fixes for "widespread boot issues" that could be keeping the PC from booting properly.

 

Initially announced in late 2024 as part of the "Windows Resiliency Initiative," QMR is one of a couple of steps that Microsoft is taking to prevent a repeat of mid-2024's CrowdStrike outage, when a bugged update to one of CrowdStrike's security products brought down millions of Windows PCs and servers and caused widespread service outages in many industries. Fixing some of those PCs required booting and fixing each one individually; QMR should make it possible to apply that kind of fix remotely even if a PC is so broken that it can't boot into Windows proper.

 

The initial version of the QMR feature is rolling out to Windows 11 PCs enrolled in the Canary channel of Microsoft's Windows Insider testing program. This is the least stable and most experimental of the four Windows 11 testing channels. As Microsoft adds features and fixes bugs, it should gradually move to the Dev, Beta, and Release Preview channels before rolling out to the Windows user base more broadly...

 

[mikes]

The thing is people use consumer versions of Microsoft Windows inappropriately for very high risk / high importance scenarios - even Microsoft themselves say in the EULA that Windows isn't designed for high risk / high importance applications. But we've all seen the hospital equipment, factory machine, ATM kiosk etc that runs a copy of Windows 7 Pro.

Windows was never designed to be highly robust, it has for example no redundant threads checking for example if explorer.exe crashes, to load it back up, and if it crashes again to load a last known good copy etc. And you could argue in a home / consumer OS you might not even want such a thing taking up CPU and memory that could be used for software, when the standard OS does the job fine.

 

But when people use Windows for kiosks, terminals etc it's no wonder things fall over as much as they do. At least now we have the computing power to make the OS a bit more robust as I doubt vendors will bother changing to a Linux OS or even properly using Windows Embedded

[Hoyt]

The funny thing is I have only encountered one crashed workstation in the past several years, and it was a highly configured unit that a tech decided to upgrade from 1909 to 22H2.  My complaint with Windows is all the bloat Microsoft packages in it which prevents it from getting out of its own way.