After a massive outage that happened in the Summer of 2024, Microsoft implemented more recovery features into its operating system to make sure that PCs affected by malware, buggy updates, or other things that prevent them from booting can recover as quickly as possible. At Ignite 2025, the company is introducing even more recovery capabilities to minimize downtime.
In addition to Quick Machine Recovery, a relatively new system that can deploy the necessary patches and fixes via WinRE, Microsoft is bringing new features, such as Point-in-time restore and Cloud rebuild.
Point-in-time restore (PITR) is designed to work as a quick and easy method to roll back a system to the previously working state, all without lengthy troubleshooting or having a ton of technical expertise. Microsoft says that PITR will be useful for regular users and IT professionals who need to recover a single device or a horde of non-working computers. Point-in-time restore should only take minutes to undo problematic changes and make things work again, restoring the operating system, applications, settings, and local files.
As for Cloud rebuild, this feature will let IT admins fix misbehaving computers by doing a full system reinstall with all the necessary drivers. If a computer does not work as it should and nothing helps to fix it, Cloud rebuild will install a fresh copy of Windows 11, with Microsoft Intune, Windows Autopilot, Windows Backup, and OneDrive taking care of the rest, such as data, apps, settings, and more. Additionally, Microsoft says that Intune will work as a unified management platform for all of its recovery tools on managed devices, and it will support sending recovery scripts to devices or triggering recovery actions directly.
Point-in-time restore and Cloud rebuild will be available as a preview in the first half of 2026 as part of the Windows Resiliency Initiative that focuses on preventing, managing, and recovering from incidents and outages.