Microsoft's new PC recovery feature

Remember last year's outage that affected millions of devices? Microsoft has since been testing a Quick Machine Recovery feature that could make recovery from major incidents (like last year's Crowdstrike outage) much faster and less painful for businesses and users.

The feature is already available for testing in the latest Windows Insider PReview build 6120.3653 and allows IT professionals to remotely restore Windows 11 devices – even if they are unable to boot.

Microsoft first announced the new recovery feature last year as part of its Windows Resilience Initiative, which was a direct response to the Crowdstrike outage. Crowdstrike released a flawed kernel-level update in July that caused blue screens of death on millions of Windows devices, affecting banks, airlines, TV stations and others. IT administrators struggled to quickly get devices back online, as many required physical access to the devices to issue a patch.

With the new recovery feature, in theory, such an outage won't happen again, or at least it won't last as long. It prompts the device to enter a Windows recovery environment, where the device can access the network and provide diagnostic information to Microsoft. Microsoft can then remotely push fixes through Windows Update.

The feature is enabled by default for home users, and Windows Insiders can now try it out in a simulated environment.