Microsoft gives Windows Update a Ctrl-Z for bad drivers Microsoft is getting to grips with Windows drivers that leave the operating system in an unstable state with a proactive rollback dubbed "Cloud-Initiated Driver Recovery." "When a driver is identified as having quality issues during our shiproom evaluation process, Microsoft can now initiate a recovery action from the cloud, …
"When a driver is identified as having quality issues during our shiproom evaluation process"
The term "shiproom evaluation" implies that they're doing some kind of checks before approving them for distribution. Surely if it'd be easier to just not ship drivers with "quality issues" than to have to write a cloud-based remediation routine after it's broken countless users' machines?
Although, with this being Microsoft, it's like they've got one instance of Copilot for testing going "This driver has issues" and the Copilot instance that does Windows Updates distribution going "So? Not my job that, guv".
Again, and I've tried to say it many, many, many times here on El Reg: MS doesn't write the drivers, they just distribute them via the Windows Update system. It is up to the suppliers to properly test and MS does as many tests as possible but, with so many hardware and software configurations Windows is capable of supporting, it would be statistically impossible to test the entire prospective vulnerable rollout surface.
But people will blame MS for the foibles anyway. It's blaming Ford for the tank of bad petrol you picked up last week. But blaming MS is a meme so I guess it's always going to happen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That argument only holds until you discover that Microsoft has to approve such a driver. That approval implicitly carries the idea that they actually check (which, I think we can confidently assume, they do not or not very well).
Now for the fun part: i'd love to see what happens when this idea comes across a bad network interface driver and downloads another one which is not as compatible with the device in question - unless we assume Microsoft never makes a mistake - let me wait a moment until you finish laughing (unless sarcasm isn't your thing).
Letting Microsoft automagically "correct" problems with third party code is such a bad idea that I'm surprised it got past their marketing department. Unless they have been replaced by Copilot too, of course, in which case it's no longer a surprise.
My Linux laptop is running a rolling release (OpenSUSE Tumbleweed for the curious) and it seems far more thoroughly tested than Windows is these days. And I've long had the ability to roll back (BTRFS snapshots) if something goes wrong, even if it can't get beyond GRUB otherwise.[1] M$ has far more in terms of resources, and still can't make rolling back easy and painless?
[1] I'll have to admit, since I've done that, my troubleshooting skills have gotten far worse. Since I can just roll back to a working state, I usually don't bother trying to figure out what went wrong since it takes all of 2 minutes to roll back.
Best have an unlimited download volume before you switch that on again and don't expect to have a usable machine for half a day or so..
I have an extra work laptop which mainly lives in a cupboard because it has tools on it that have no place on a production network other than for the tests this machine does - certain tools you just don't leave online (especially when they're part controlled by a third party, too complicated to explain here).
If I don't start that machine up every month or so in order to keep it updated I know I won't have a usable machine when it really counts.
That said, I now also have a Mac for the same job. Also far less power hungry - where the Dell needs power after an hour or so, the Mac happily runs for a whole day on a single charge and is quicker to boot (both literally and figuratively). Once it's been fully set up we may just retire the Windows laptop..
When the OS can no longer boot or stay up long enough to initiate a rollback.
Does that repair thing Windows will drop into after a couple of failed boots do anything useful? I know it can repair some things but last I checked system restore points weren't on by default, and even if they are they are not applied automatically.
You can configure GRUB to automatically boot the previous kernel if the current one fails, and I think macOS keeps an entire snapshot of the previous system after an upgrade. (You can do the same thing on Linux with btrfs snapshots.)
This is a weirdly classic contradiction...
*Searching* *gotcha* not exactly that, but well, I though it would :D. Only WSUS is left out.
Your days of driver sync via Windows Server Update Services are numbered
I remember the meaningless WHQL certification. I don’t see that anymore.
Probably tantamount to scanning it with AV/AM and installing default and allowing a system to boot and not crash.
I upvoted the ‘installs older worse drivers over newer’ post because the Windows Update Show Hide tool is W10 and deprecated.
