Windows 11 is getting a new point-in-time restore feature and other advanced recovery tools

Microsoft has announced several new recovery tools and features coming to Windows 11 that are designed to help users bring a PC back to a working state in the event of catastrophic failure. The company is outlining a handful of new features that will help keep your PC operational, or make it easy to bring it back to operational even if an update or driver takes it offline.

The first new feature is something called point-in-time restore, which will let users "rollback a PC to the exact state it was in an earlier point in time." Microsoft says this feature should help people recover from a wide range of issues, including problematic updates or drivers, and configuration errors.

Other recovery improvements include built-in networking support in the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE.) While WinRE has supported networking for a long time, it always required manually injecting the network driver first. Now, WinRE will pull the networking driver from the main Windows OS install, meaning you no longe need to inject the driver yourself. This will work first with ethernet, but will eventually support Wi-Fi with WPA2/3 too.

The company has also announced a new cloud rebuild feature, which will let enterprises configure where work-issued PCs grab their recovery images from. Enterprises will be able to use Intune to select the necessary language and OS release, and will lean on OneDrive for business to ensure user data is maintained throughout the reinstallation process.

For POS machines, Microsoft is adding a new mode that will automatically hide any Windows error dialogs that might normally appear on public-facing displays. "This new Windows mode is perfect for machines which drive non interactive public displays, whether that be a restaurant menu or an airport flight display. Once enabled, it helps ensure no Windows screens or error dialogs will show on your public displays. For Windows screens and errors messages needed for diagnostics and recovery, Windows will only show the screen or error for 15 seconds and then turn off the screen while waiting for keyboard or mouse input to reactivate.

• Quick Machine Recovery (QMR) was released for general availability earlier this year and is soon getting increased networking capabilities and Autopatch management for enterprise level control of QMR updates.
• Intune recovery is remote management of the Windows Recovery Environment – A single, scalable management plane for recovery, enables customers to execute custom recovery scripts and to trigger recovery actions. Azure Portal will have the same ability for Windows Servers hosted in Azure VMs. Now generally available.
• Point-in-time restore: Roll back individual or groups of devices to a previous state, before an issue started occurring, without complex troubleshooting.
• Cloud rebuild for Windows 11 (preview): Rebuild PCs experiencing erratic behavior, reducing downtime. You’ll be able to select the Windows release and language through the Intune portal. The PC will download the install media, rebuild itself, and let the user take over with the out-of box experience where Autopilot will ensure the right MDM management is configured. The user gets apps, PC settings, and their files quickly through Intune, Windows Backup for Organizations, and OneDrive.

These new recovery tools are designed to make Windows 11 more resilient when it comes to faulty updates or drivers. In the event that a PC is taken offline by a bug or faulty code, it shouldn't be difficult to restore the PC to a working state, ideally with no data lost.

Since the big CrowdStrike outage in 2024, Microsoft has taken Windows resiliency very seriously. It's moved to ensure Windows being taken offline is an issue that can be easily addressed, even remotely, so that functionality can be restored as soon as possible.

It just announced a major driver signing update that will see drivers be held to a higher standard, while reducing reliance on proprietary kernel level drivers from OEMs. It's all in the name of ensuring the Windows core is as stable as possible.

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