At the Computex event last May, Microsoft’s EVP and Chief Product Officer Panos Panai said maintaining the high quality of Windows 11 is the company’s top priority. And while it’s not explicitly stated, Microsoft certainly seems to be planning to do so as they continue to update their driver evaluation procedures.

Microsoft’s main program manager, Garrett Duchesne, recently published a post on the tech community blog explaining the company’s latest improvements to audio and video driver evaluation. The new driver evaluation method will help address related driver timeout issues when playing DRM content on Netflix and similar apps by looking at Software Digital Rights Management (SWDRM) catalog reload events.

In a document titled “Percentage of SWDRM playback devices that generated a catalog reload event,” Microsoft explains:

Devices that encounter a code integrity index reload event while loading binaries in mfpmp.exe may experience a timeout from Netflix and other applications. This “device-based” metric is used to capture this scenario.

DRM (Digital Rights Management) techniques (software or hardware) are used when playing video on Windows devices. We use the whole set of SWDRM playback devices to calculate the percentage.

In addition, the company also wants to better account for audio processing object or APO (software digital signal processing) crash because the current method can often cause audio crash for a while during driver submission. This is explained in the documentation titled “Percentage of machines with at least one APO shutdown in the last 7 days” where Microsoft says:

When audio APOs crash at least 10 times in a row, the audio service disables further use of APOs so that the user has error-free audio. This can cause our audio error measurement in the driver view to fail for a while and then start passing again when APO is disabled, causing the problem in that driver view. This metric tracks APO shutdowns for the last 7 days compared to devices using audio that day (audio client launch event).

Although Microsoft continues its efforts to improve Windows drivers, there are often problems that are hidden from the reader. These issues are sometimes related to Multiplane Overlay (MPO), a feature in Windows 11 and Windows 10 that seems to cause various display issues, and disabling it can usually fix various errors. These errors include white mouse cursor, black screen, white screen, misfire and flickering etc.