4 ms·

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

37 points by thunderbong 1y ago

instagib 1y ago
Sounds interestingly good. A recent patch bricked my entire hard drive making it unable to boot or mount. New install of Win11 on new hard drive didn’t install recovery mode so I had to do it manually.
- number6 1y ago
  When did this become acceptable? If you had installed btfs and something like this happend people would be all over the place, but on windows this is normal
  - toyg 1y ago
    It has always been acceptable, in the Windows world. Machines have always been seen as inevitably fragile and ethereal. This is why the likes of Dropbox took off, among other things.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > When did this become acceptable? When he/she installed Microsoft products.
  - Saris 1y ago
    Regardless of OS, if you don't have reliable backups then stuff like this will happen from software or hardware issues. Best to have automated system images nightly.
bni 1y ago
The Windows UI is more broken and bloated than ever, how about fixing that?
- alliao 1y ago
  3 different UI and styles to toggle the same thing is beyond fixing
PUSH_AX 1y ago
Polishing turds.
anon7000 1y ago
Win11 has been a trash OS for me. Laggy on great hardware, ads, BSODs, reliability issues, and more. Not to mention devices like audio interfaces not working out of the box, despite working out of the box on Mac & Linux. Such an annoying operating system. It’s easily the least reliable OS I’ve used in the past 5 years of using Linux, Mac, and windows regularly. The only one that’s crashed on me frequently. So it’s good they’re adding this tool, but sucks that these scenarios are so common a tool like this is needed. However, I’ve seen issues where something gets corrupted, a sfc scannow check is triggered on reboot, and never finds anything. Windows diagnostic troubleshooting is very painful because the OS doesn't give you much information, and what’s there is very obscure. So if this tool is built on that shoddy foundation, I’m not sure it’ll be very successful. There are thousands of guides suggesting an sfcscannow or other disk check and they never work.
- Incipient 1y ago
  For reference I used to be a Microsoft advocate in XP days, but since then I have decline. Feels like since Azure started them become money hungry. On topic, I don't have an alternative for Windows. I have plenty of issues with Linux "just working" (sound, graphics, etc).
- gavinray 1y ago
  Win11 was great for me, but recently the shoe-horning of Copilot/AI into everything has been degrading my experience. The worst of it being Notepad. I use Notepad _constantly_. I am always pasting little bits of text or drafts of things in ephemeral tabs for later reference. For the first time in Windows history, there is PERCEIVABLE FUCKING LATENCY trying to type ... in NOTEPAD.EXE Idk what the execs are smoking there, but they need to fix this ASAP.
  - anthk 1y ago
    Use Notepad2. https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/screenshots https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/screenshots
    - 1y ago
anthk 1y ago
Uhm, Fedora Silverblue and similar OSTree based distros (And GNU Guix) can rollback themselves from boot.
- MortyWaves 1y ago
  Does the article suggest otherwise?
kitsune_ 1y ago
Would be great if I could use it with my 6700k.
hulitu 1y ago
> New Windows 11 build adds self-healing "quick machine recovery" feature Which, in the best Microsoft tradition, will become broken by a new "update".
- kotaKat 1y ago
  It'll just be swapping out the used pair of underwear that is a Windows install that's been "upgraded" fifty times with a slightly less dirty pair of underwear that's still going to get "upgraded" in place another fifty times. .... I never enjoyed the full OS "upgrade in place" crap that Windows has been doing for a while...
ksec 1y ago
Interesting comments here because from my limited usage of Windows 11 I thought it was pretty good. UI, Ads, and a lot of little annoying things are still there but it was also the case in Windows 10 and prior. ( Ok may be not ads ) But it is better. I just wish Windows 11 start doing 11.1 and 11.2 instead of some 2H26 name. And start iterating towards a better Windows 12. May be because there are plenty of low hanging fruit still that makes Windows improvement easier. Cant say the same about macOS. Let's see if macOS 26 will be any better.
- chneu 1y ago
  My biggest issue with Win11 is that it constantly forces AI down our throats while removing our ability to do basic things without clicking into sub menus. It's pretty clearly a push to get people to use a product inside of the OS, which defeats the purpose of the OS. The UI is a garbled mess of like 15 years of UI design. There are 3+ menus for doing nearly every task. You can still use some views that have been around since windows 98. Then basic tasks get hidden. it's just a garbled mess in so many ways. They push updates that break the OS on a regular basis. And then with every update it erases all the changes you've made. The lack of customization is really annoying. Then some updates kill performance for no real reason. A couple years ago I switched to a custom build of Win10(spectre) then finally made the jump to full time linux again. My partner also switched, as did a bunch of her coworkers in academia. Everyone had similar complaints, in that win11 was harder to use for what they needed without any real benefits. I asked if there has been anything in win11 that has been beneficial and nobody can really say anything. A lot of win 11 feels like updating just to update. Also somehow win11 audio/bluetooth is worse than linux. I had so, so many issues with bluetooth audio in win11. Just a mess of an OS.
  - pmdr 1y ago
    > Then basic tasks get hidden. > The lack of customization is really annoying. This has been plaguing pretty much all software for at least 15 years now. Everyone wants to get away with an MVP. Advanced settings are deeply buried or they're simply inaccessible to users. Error messages no longer say anything meaningful, just 'oops' and 'we're sorry.' And that 'we' pronoun shatters any doubt as to who's now in control.
userbinator 1y ago
"self-healing" = "we'll revert changes you did that we (MS) don't want"
potato-peeler 1y ago
> 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 Strange naming convention. In my company canary sits between dev and beta, usually used for load testing. Then move to beta for A/B and stability testing, and finally to release/production. Dev is the most unstable.
- aksss 1y ago
  I think Dev from the Windows perspective is targeted towards people developing solutions atop windows, whereas I assume in your org, Dev is indicating development of the actual product/codebase you have. With Windows, Canary does come after that point - we don’t have access to the channel you would refer to as Dev.
ChocolateGod 1y ago
It's a shame they abandoned Windows 10X, which would of allowed fatal upgrades to be instantly reversable (due to being image based) rather than 'workarounds' for terrible OS design like this. Akin to Google using things like overlay filesystems to deploy Android updates (by skipping the OS managed by OEMs) rather than actually fixing the update system.
J37T3R 1y ago
I'm actually pretty hopeful about this - I do some home computer help as a side gig and Windows recovery is usually either great or a complete roadblock. Usually if it can get to the recovery environment and people remember their passwords the existing tools are great. If not... well either wipe or good luck. Anything that helps Windows get to the RE is great.

37 points by thunderbong 1y ago

Sounds interestingly good. A recent patch bricked my entire hard drive making it unable to boot or mount. New install of Win11 on new hard drive didn’t install recovery mode so I had to do it manually.

number6 1y ago
When did this become acceptable? If you had installed btfs and something like this happend people would be all over the place, but on windows this is normal
- toyg 1y ago
  It has always been acceptable, in the Windows world. Machines have always been seen as inevitably fragile and ethereal. This is why the likes of Dropbox took off, among other things.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- hulitu 1y ago
  > When did this become acceptable? When he/she installed Microsoft products.
- Saris 1y ago
  Regardless of OS, if you don't have reliable backups then stuff like this will happen from software or hardware issues. Best to have automated system images nightly.

bni 1y ago

The Windows UI is more broken and bloated than ever, how about fixing that?

alliao 1y ago
3 different UI and styles to toggle the same thing is beyond fixing

PUSH_AX 1y ago

Polishing turds.

anon7000 1y ago

Win11 has been a trash OS for me. Laggy on great hardware, ads, BSODs, reliability issues, and more. Not to mention devices like audio interfaces not working out of the box, despite working out of the box on Mac & Linux. Such an annoying operating system. It’s easily the least reliable OS I’ve used in the past 5 years of using Linux, Mac, and windows regularly. The only one that’s crashed on me frequently. So it’s good they’re adding this tool, but sucks that these scenarios are so common a tool like this is needed. However, I’ve seen issues where something gets corrupted, a sfc scannow check is triggered on reboot, and never finds anything. Windows diagnostic troubleshooting is very painful because the OS doesn't give you much information, and what’s there is very obscure. So if this tool is built on that shoddy foundation, I’m not sure it’ll be very successful. There are thousands of guides suggesting an sfcscannow or other disk check and they never work.

Incipient 1y ago
For reference I used to be a Microsoft advocate in XP days, but since then I have decline. Feels like since Azure started them become money hungry. On topic, I don't have an alternative for Windows. I have plenty of issues with Linux "just working" (sound, graphics, etc).
gavinray 1y ago
Win11 was great for me, but recently the shoe-horning of Copilot/AI into everything has been degrading my experience. The worst of it being Notepad. I use Notepad _constantly_. I am always pasting little bits of text or drafts of things in ephemeral tabs for later reference. For the first time in Windows history, there is PERCEIVABLE FUCKING LATENCY trying to type ... in NOTEPAD.EXE Idk what the execs are smoking there, but they need to fix this ASAP.
- anthk 1y ago
  Use Notepad2. https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/screenshots https://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/screenshots
  - 1y ago

anthk 1y ago

Uhm, Fedora Silverblue and similar OSTree based distros (And GNU Guix) can rollback themselves from boot.

MortyWaves 1y ago
Does the article suggest otherwise?

kitsune_ 1y ago

Would be great if I could use it with my 6700k.

hulitu 1y ago

> New Windows 11 build adds self-healing "quick machine recovery" feature Which, in the best Microsoft tradition, will become broken by a new "update".

kotaKat 1y ago
It'll just be swapping out the used pair of underwear that is a Windows install that's been "upgraded" fifty times with a slightly less dirty pair of underwear that's still going to get "upgraded" in place another fifty times. .... I never enjoyed the full OS "upgrade in place" crap that Windows has been doing for a while...

ksec 1y ago

Interesting comments here because from my limited usage of Windows 11 I thought it was pretty good. UI, Ads, and a lot of little annoying things are still there but it was also the case in Windows 10 and prior. ( Ok may be not ads ) But it is better. I just wish Windows 11 start doing 11.1 and 11.2 instead of some 2H26 name. And start iterating towards a better Windows 12. May be because there are plenty of low hanging fruit still that makes Windows improvement easier. Cant say the same about macOS. Let's see if macOS 26 will be any better.

chneu 1y ago
My biggest issue with Win11 is that it constantly forces AI down our throats while removing our ability to do basic things without clicking into sub menus. It's pretty clearly a push to get people to use a product inside of the OS, which defeats the purpose of the OS. The UI is a garbled mess of like 15 years of UI design. There are 3+ menus for doing nearly every task. You can still use some views that have been around since windows 98. Then basic tasks get hidden. it's just a garbled mess in so many ways. They push updates that break the OS on a regular basis. And then with every update it erases all the changes you've made. The lack of customization is really annoying. Then some updates kill performance for no real reason. A couple years ago I switched to a custom build of Win10(spectre) then finally made the jump to full time linux again. My partner also switched, as did a bunch of her coworkers in academia. Everyone had similar complaints, in that win11 was harder to use for what they needed without any real benefits. I asked if there has been anything in win11 that has been beneficial and nobody can really say anything. A lot of win 11 feels like updating just to update. Also somehow win11 audio/bluetooth is worse than linux. I had so, so many issues with bluetooth audio in win11. Just a mess of an OS.
- pmdr 1y ago
  > Then basic tasks get hidden. > The lack of customization is really annoying. This has been plaguing pretty much all software for at least 15 years now. Everyone wants to get away with an MVP. Advanced settings are deeply buried or they're simply inaccessible to users. Error messages no longer say anything meaningful, just 'oops' and 'we're sorry.' And that 'we' pronoun shatters any doubt as to who's now in control.

userbinator 1y ago

"self-healing" = "we'll revert changes you did that we (MS) don't want"

potato-peeler 1y ago

> 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 Strange naming convention. In my company canary sits between dev and beta, usually used for load testing. Then move to beta for A/B and stability testing, and finally to release/production. Dev is the most unstable.

aksss 1y ago
I think Dev from the Windows perspective is targeted towards people developing solutions atop windows, whereas I assume in your org, Dev is indicating development of the actual product/codebase you have. With Windows, Canary does come after that point - we don’t have access to the channel you would refer to as Dev.

ChocolateGod 1y ago

It's a shame they abandoned Windows 10X, which would of allowed fatal upgrades to be instantly reversable (due to being image based) rather than 'workarounds' for terrible OS design like this. Akin to Google using things like overlay filesystems to deploy Android updates (by skipping the OS managed by OEMs) rather than actually fixing the update system.

J37T3R 1y ago

I'm actually pretty hopeful about this - I do some home computer help as a side gig and Windows recovery is usually either great or a complete roadblock. Usually if it can get to the recovery environment and people remember their passwords the existing tools are great. If not... well either wipe or good luck. Anything that helps Windows get to the RE is great.