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A little discussed feature of the upcoming Windows Vista is called 'Freeze Dry', and it's sure to be a blessing for all of us who leave our PCs running rather than shutting everything down when we move away from the keyboard. Have you ever come back only to find that an update has rebooted the system and you've lost the data you were working on? Have you ever clicked 'Yes' to a restart request only to realise you hadn't saved our data? There's no need to worry about that frustrating circumstance any more.

Built on a core of software technology already in Windows XP, the 'Freeze Dry' feature will recognise the application your document is attached to, save the current state of open programs, save your data, and then restore all to as it was before after the reboot.

The feature is so far being touted as a useful one for IT managers. That seems to be a quite limited way to promote it, because the feature will doubtless be useful to just about everybody. In addition to protecting your data, the 'Restart manager' which underpins the feature better manages files which need to be 'locked' during the update process, and reduces the number of reboots needed by controlling the update process more closely.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by alc6379

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— your summary matches how Microsoft described the feature in previews: “Freeze Dry” was a marketing name used around Vista to describe the OS taking a snapshot of running apps, saving state, and restoring them after an update-driven reboot. Early press coverage (and Microsoft quotes) tied the behavior directly to Vista’s new Restart Manager. eWeek article.

— the important distinction is that the Restart Manager and the Application Recovery/Restart APIs are Vista additions. Windows XP already had pieces of the reliability story (Windows Error Reporting and the older error tools), but it did not expose the Restart Manager or the RegisterApplicationRestart / RegisterApplicationRecoveryCallback style APIs that let the OS or installers save-and-restart applications automatically. The Restart Manager API and its runtime support begin with Windows Vista. Microsoft: Restart Manager · Microsoft: Registering for Application Restart.

Practical notes and limits: applications must opt in / be written to support restart-and-recover (or register for restart) for Freeze Dry to recover their exact state; installers that use Windows Installer 4.0 on Vista will use Restart Manager automatically to reduce reboots. Restart Manager cannot avoid reboots for kernel-level updates, and it won’t restart processes running elevated or in other user sessions without extra handling. Developers should call the Application Recovery/Restart APIs and test restart scenarios; admins should test patches in a lab first. Using Windows Installer with Restart Manager · RmRestart docs (limitations).

If the goal is “not losing unsaved work” today, rely on app autosave/AutoRecover plus application support for the Recovery/Restart APIs; the OS feature helps only when apps cooperatively expose state to the Restart Manager.

Member Avatar for alc6379

Out of curiosity, do we know what technology this was in XP? I'd like to see what the current technology in XP has to offer in this regard...

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