Microsoft is Quietly Retiring the Legacy Troubleshooters in Home windows 11

Again in February, Microsoft quietly revealed that it will retire what it now calls the legacy inbox troubleshooters in Home windows 11. I’m unsure why I by no means wrote about this, however I must replace the Home windows 11 Discipline Information to handle this variation, since Microsoft appears to be a bit forward of schedule on this transition.

Anyway, let’s step by way of this and check out what has modified.

“Microsoft is retiring the Home windows legacy inbox Troubleshooters, equivalent to Keyboard troubleshooter and Speech troubleshooter, and the Microsoft Help Diagnostic Software (MSDT) that runs them,” a Microsoft help doc from February notes. “The legacy inbox Home windows Troubleshooters are built-in instruments that, when launched, robotically diagnose and proper frequent issues for a wide range of Home windows options. MSDT Troubleshooters shall be deprecated within the subsequent Home windows 11 launch, with the date to be decided.”

The now-legacy inbox Troubleshooting platform debuted in 2009 with Home windows 7. It’s a management panel that changed the Assist and Help troubleshooting instruments from earlier Home windows variations, and it has carried ahead in subsequent Home windows variations largely unchanged, no less than from a UI perspective. Although in Home windows 11 in the present day, you entry this technique by way of the Settings app, in System > Troubleshoot > Different troubleshooters.

Till pretty lately, many of the legacy troubleshooters had been nonetheless accessible right here. However testing this in the present day, I can discover just one occasion during which the legacy troubleshooter seems, for Home windows Replace.

The remainder of the troubleshooters discovered listed below are new and a part of Home windows 11’s Get Assist app. For instance:

Get Assistance is only a prettier front-end for these things, I assume. Plus, the Management Panel has been on the best way out for much too lengthy as it’s.

However what’s fascinating about this to me is that I’ve been which means to write down about this for weeks, however many of the troubleshooters had been nonetheless of the legacy selection. However after I checked out them this week, I may see that the majority had converted. I attempted this on a number of PCs, each 22H2 and 23H2 (Beta channel), and bought the identical outcomes. Solely after I introduced up an out-of-date 22H2 digital machine (VM) in Hyper-V did I see what I had seen earlier than.

The transition schedule Microsoft printed again in February hasn’t modified (thanks, Wayback Machine). However it seems that Microsoft is now properly forward of that schedule, which requires it to start redirecting some legacy troubleshooters to the brand new system in 2023, full the transition in 2024 after which take away the remainder of the troubleshooters, after which take away the underlying MSDT platform in 2025.

Primarily based on these dates, I’d have guessed that the legacy troubleshooters can be deprecated in Home windows 11 model 23H2 after which retired in Home windows 11/12 model 24H2. However most of them are already deprecated now in model 22H2.

That mentioned, you may nonetheless discover the legacy variations of the troubleshooters (as a result of they’re deprecated, not eliminated) in case you strive exhausting sufficient. For instance, to make use of the outdated Community and Web troubleshooter, use troubleshoot community in Begin search after which choose “Discover and repair community issues” from the outcomes. Ditto for Audio troubleshooting (troubleshoot sound then “Discover and repair issues with enjoying sound”), Printer troubleshooting (troubleshoot print then “Discover and repair issues with printing”), and so forth. I assume these outcomes will all disappear alongside the legacy troubleshooters in Home windows 11 model 24H2. Or earlier than then, given the velocity at which this has occurred to date.

Irrespective of. I’ll attempt to get the e-book up to date this weekend.