Microsoft brings fast system recovery and revised blue screens | heise online
Microsoft has included some new features for testing in a Windows preview version from the weekend in the Insider Beta channel. For example, there is a quick system restore. The developers have also revised the bluescreens after a crash.
So far, the Windows 11 blue screens still look like Windows 10.
(Image: heise online / dmk)
Until now, the bluescreens of death (BSoD) after a Windows crash have looked the same as under Windows 10. A sad smiley, a QR code encoding a link to general support articles and an error message adorn the crash message, which indicates progress in data collection.
The new blue screens are tidier and adapted to the Windows 11 design guidelines.
(Image: Microsoft)
The future bluescreens should now be more in line with the Windows 11 design guidelines and appear much more streamlined. The “user experience” has been simplified and should bring those affected back to productive work more quickly while still providing technical information, Microsoft's developers write in the announcement of the beta version on the Windows Insider blog. A screenshot of an example BSoD shows that the QR code and the emotional smiley are missing, but a new hexadecimal error code and the driver file causing the error are now displayed. Possibly irritating: In Insider preview versions, blue screens are colored green.
Microsoft had already announced at the Ignite 2024 event that it wanted to make Windows more resilient. Part of the effort is the now available Quick Machine Recovery (QMR). If the function is activated, it can automatically detect widespread boot problems on Windows 11 devices and correct them from the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). This reduces downtimes and the need for manual intervention.
If a critical boot error occurs, the device should start WinRE, connect to the network and send diagnostic data to Microsoft. Targeted countermeasures can then be applied via Windows Update. Microsoft would like to encourage IT admins to activate and test the function – for home users, the feature is activated automatically. A separate blog post in Microsoft's tech community provides a little more detail.
While the QR code disappears from the Windows BSoD, the Linux kernel even received a significantly expanded bluescreen function with more extensive error information late last summer.
(dmk)
