Post-Setup configuration of W11 Quick Machine Recovery

[garlin]

Quick Machine Recovery is a new W11 24H2 feature rolled out in KB5062660 (July 2025 Preview).

It's designed to be an auto-recovery option when your Windows keeps crashing at boot time (like what happened with Crowdstrike pushing out a bad kernel driver). Windows will notice it's repeatedly crashing, and switch to a special WinRE mode to await for an emergency bug fix pushed out by MS.

Do you need this as a single user? No, it's primarily designed for organizations which have more PC's than the admin(s) can handle if they had to repair every single system in person. If your system is crashing on boot, obviously you can't use remote management to fix the problem.



To configure QMR, you must use a reagentc command along with a config XML. There is no GPO or reg values available because the settings are written to SrSettings.ini file inside WinRE.

Quick machine recovery

---

This is a PowerShell script which you can run from Post-Setup, which updates the different parameters. In the current MS docs, they claim it's possible to add a Wi-Fi profile so WinRE can wirelessly connect on the network during a recovery, but it doesn't appear to work right now.

Add this script with no parameters. Edit the QMR settings in this code block:

$params = @{
    EnableCloudRemediation = $true
    EnableAutoRemediation = $true
    SetTimeToReboot = 2400
    SetRetryInterval = 120
    HeadlessMode = $false
    NetworkSSID = 'ContosoWiFi'
    NetworkPassword = 'ContosoWiFiPassword'
}

$XML_File = "$env:TEMP\settings.xml"

# reagentc support for SSID/Password is currently broken
$params = @{
    EnableCloudRemediation = $true
    EnableAutoRemediation = $true
    SetTimeToReboot = 2400
    SetRetryInterval = 120
    HeadlessMode = $false
    NetworkSSID = 'ContosoWiFi'
    NetworkPassword = 'ContosoWiFiPassword'
}

function ConfigureSettings {
    param (
        [bool]$EnableCloudRemediation = $true,
        [bool]$EnableAutoRemediation = $true,
        [ValidateRange(1,4320)]
        [int]$SetTimeToReboot = 180,
        [ValidateRange(1,4320)]
        [int]$SetRetryInterval = 30,
        [bool]$HeadlessMode = $false,
        [string]$NetworkSSID,
        [string]$NetworkPassword
    )

    if ($SetRetryInterval -gt $SetTimeToReboot) {
        $SetRetryInterval = $SetTimeToReboot
    }

@"
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<WindowsRE>
    <WifiCredential>
        <Wifi ssid="$NetworkSSID" password="$NetworkPassword"/>
    </WifiCredential>
    <CloudRemediation state="$([int]$EnableCloudRemediation)" />
    <AutoRemediation state="$([int]$EnableAutoRemediation)" totalwaittime="$SetTimeToReboot" waitinterval="$SetRetryInterval"/>
    <Headless state="$([int]$HeadlessMode)"/>
</WindowsRE>
"@ | Set-Content $XML_File -Force
}

ConfigureSettings @params

reagentc.exe /setrecoverysettings /path $XML_File
#reagentc.exe /getrecoverysettings
Remove-Item $XML_File -Force