The Redmond giant has confirmed a new movement with which it hopes to improve the quality of Windows 11 drivers, something very important since in the end the user experience and performance of said operating system highly dependent on drivers. Something as simple as a small error at the driver level could cause from performance losses to stops, temporary freezes and closing of applications to blue screens of death.
Microsoft’s idea is divided into two parts, although the base is, as we have said, improving the quality of Windows 11 drivers. On the one hand, the company has confirmed that it is going to use a new driver evaluation method, which will consist of analyze Software Digital Rights Management (SWDRM) catalog reload eventswhich will help solve problems related to important aspects such as driver timeout when playing software-based DRM content, something that is key in services like Netflix and other similar applications for streaming media content.
On the other hand, Microsoft also wants to improve Windows 11 drivers reducing the error rate of sound drivers, and to do so, it will adjust the failure counting mechanism since, on occasions, it could produce errors in the measurements, which meant that sound crashes were not properly counted during the evaluation process. To better understand this issue, it is important to review what Microsoft has commented:
«When audio APOs (Audio Processing Object) fail at least 10 consecutive times, the audio service disables further use of APO so that the user has an error-free sound experience. This can cause our sound glitch measurement to fail for a while on the driver submission, and then start to fail again when the APO causing the issue on that driver submission is disabled. This metric tracks APO disables in the last 7 days against devices using audio on that day (audio client initialization event).”
During the last years the failures at the driver level in Windows 10 were, without a doubt, one of the most important problems with which Microsoft had to deal, and Windows 11 is not being an exception, so it is totally understandable that the company has decided to take measures in this regard. We will see what effects it has, and if it really manages to improve the current situation.
