Microsoft has added a new feature to Windows 11 Insider Preview called Proactive Memory Diagnostics, which helps to detect and analyze RAM-related crashes. If you own a PC for long enough, chances are you encountered odd crashes at one point and ended up scratching heads while troubleshooting, so this tool aims to help that.
Proactive Memory Diagnostics
With this feature, when the system crashes – in other words, hits a Blue (Black) Screen of Death (BSOD) – Windows will now prompt the user to run a memory scan; the scan then runs automatically on the next reboot and checks for memory errors or instability via the built-in Windows Memory Diagnostics tool. The process usually takes about five minutes, though this depends on memory size, meaning PCs with more RAM installed may take longer to scan.
It’s worth noting that while this offers some level of remedy for memory-related crashes, it’s more or less designed for quick sanity checks. Some memory errors can be especially difficult to catch due to their subtle nature, so dedicated tools like Memtest86 are still needed for a thorough scan, which can take hours or even days to complete. In its current form, Proactive Memory Diagnostics will intervene as soon as the system crashes, although this will be refined in the future to step in only when the error involves memory issues.
Microsoft also notes that the preview won’t work on PCs that match these criteria: Arm64-based PCs, systems with Administrator Protection, or systems with BitLocker without Secure Boot enabled. This is most likely a temporary measure as the feature is still undergoing testing.
Pokdepinion: Memory errors are especially difficult to deal with, so this is a step in the right direction.
