Windows 10 Diagnostic Tools play a crucial role in how your device interacts with Microsoft, providing essential information about its operation and performance. This system of diagnostics and feedback is designed to ensure your Windows experience is secure, up-to-date, and constantly improving. As a user, understanding these tools and the data they collect is key to managing your privacy while contributing to the overall enhancement of the Windows ecosystem. Microsoft utilizes this diagnostic information to troubleshoot problems, maintain security, and develop product improvements. You, in turn, have control over the level of diagnostic data shared and can actively provide feedback to shape the future of Windows.
What Data is Collected by Windows 10 Diagnostic Tools and Why?
Microsoft collects diagnostic data from Windows 10 devices to achieve several critical objectives: keeping products secure and current, effectively troubleshooting issues, and continuously making product improvements. It’s important to understand that regardless of whether you choose to send optional diagnostic data, your device remains equally secure and functions normally. This data is transmitted to Microsoft and stored using unique identifiers, allowing for recognition of individual users on specific devices. This helps in understanding service issues and usage patterns at a granular level.
Diagnostic data is categorized into two levels: Required and Optional. This categorization reflects Microsoft’s commitment to transparency and customer control over data collection. During a transition period, “Basic” diagnostic data has been reclassified as “Required,” and “Full” diagnostic data is now known as “Optional.”
Required Diagnostic Data: The Essentials for Device Health
Required diagnostic data encompasses fundamental information about your device, its configurations, capabilities, and operational status. This is the minimum dataset necessary to help ensure your device is reliable, secure, and functioning as expected. Think of it as the vital signs of your device’s health, providing Microsoft with the essential insights to maintain a stable Windows environment for all users.
Optional Diagnostic Data: Deeper Insights for Enhanced Improvements
Optional diagnostic data goes beyond the essentials, including additional details about your device, its settings, capabilities, and overall health. Crucially, it may also include data about your browsing activity, device usage patterns, and enhanced error reporting. In situations where a system or application crashes, optional diagnostic data might even capture the memory state of your device, potentially including fragments of files you were working on when the problem occurred.
It’s important to note that if you opt to send optional diagnostic data, required diagnostic data is always included. Furthermore, choosing to share optional data allows Microsoft to potentially combine Windows diagnostic data with data from other Microsoft products. This broader dataset facilitates quicker identification and resolution of issues and enables more impactful product improvements that benefit all Windows users. While your device remains secure and functional with only required data being sent, the additional insights from optional data significantly enhance Microsoft’s ability to refine and improve the Windows experience.
Even when users choose to send Optional diagnostic data, not all data described might be collected from every device. Microsoft employs a sampling technique to minimize the volume of Optional diagnostic data collected. This means some data is gathered from only a subset of devices. To provide transparency, the Diagnostic Data Viewer tool displays an icon indicating whether your device is part of a sample and reveals precisely what data is being collected from it. You can find instructions on downloading the Diagnostic Data Viewer tool within Windows 10 at Start > Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & feedback and in Windows 11 at Start > Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics & feedback.
Alt: Navigating to the Diagnostic Data Viewer settings in Windows 10 Privacy settings menu.
The specific data points collected within Windows diagnostics are not static. They are subject to change, providing Microsoft with the agility to gather the necessary data for the purposes outlined. For instance, to effectively troubleshoot emerging performance issues or update newly released Windows devices, Microsoft may need to collect data elements not previously gathered. For up-to-date lists of data types collected for both Required and Optional diagnostic data, refer to Windows Required diagnostic events and fields and Windows Optional diagnostic data.
How Required Diagnostic Data Keeps Windows Up-to-Date
Microsoft leverages Required diagnostic data to ensure Windows devices remain current and secure. Specifically, they utilize:
- Basic error information: This helps determine if update-related issues can be resolved through the update process itself.
- Device, settings, and capability information: Including details about installed applications and drivers, to assess device readiness and compatibility with upcoming operating system or app releases and updates.
- Update process logging: This tracks the progress of updates through various stages – downloading, pre-installation, post-installation, post-reboot, and setup – to understand the update process flow.
- Update performance data across devices: This allows Microsoft to evaluate the success of update deployments and identify device characteristics (hardware, peripherals, settings, applications) associated with successful or failed updates.
- Data on upgrade failures: Analyzing why upgrades fail on certain devices helps determine whether to re-offer the same upgrade.
Troubleshooting Reliability and Security with Diagnostic Data
Both Required and Optional diagnostic data are instrumental in troubleshooting issues, ultimately enhancing the reliability and security of Windows and related products and services.
Microsoft relies on Required diagnostic data to:
- Understand hardware, system, and software diversity: Comprehending the vast range of configurations used by customers is essential for effective troubleshooting.
- Analyze issues based on specific configurations: Pinpointing problems to specific hardware, system, and software combinations allows for targeted fixes and issue resolution.
- Identify app and process performance issues: Determining if an app crashes or hangs and when crash-dump files are created (note: crash dumps are not collected without optional data permissions).
- Ensure diagnostic system effectiveness: Understanding and resolving issues within the diagnostic data transmission system itself is crucial for data integrity.
By choosing to send Optional diagnostic data, users provide Microsoft with valuable additional data that facilitates faster problem detection and resolution. This includes:
- App activity information: Understanding user actions within an app leading to a problem, in conjunction with the impact of other running apps or processes.
- Device health data: Information like battery level or application responsiveness helps contextualize application performance issues and guide corrective actions.
- Enhanced error reporting and crash dumps: These provide deeper insights into the specific conditions surrounding errors or crashes.
Improving Windows Through Diagnostic Insights
Required diagnostic data is used to drive improvements to Windows itself, while Optional diagnostic data extends this to encompass related products and services.
Microsoft leverages Required diagnostic data for product enhancement in key areas such as: keeping devices updated and secure, problem-solving, accessibility, reliability, performance, feature enhancements, app and driver compatibility, privacy, and energy efficiency.
Specifically, Required diagnostic data is used to:
- Prioritize product improvements: Device, peripheral, setting, and configuration data helps determine which improvements will have the most significant positive impact for the majority of Windows users.
- Prioritize app compatibility and feature improvements: Information about installed apps guides testing and development efforts towards the most popular applications.
Optional diagnostic data further enhances these improvement efforts, enabling even more meaningful refinements to Windows and related offerings. This is achieved through:
- App activity analysis: Prioritizing app compatibility testing and feature enhancements for frequently used apps and features.
- Device health impact analysis: Understanding how device characteristics, configuration, and app activity affect device health (e.g., battery life) to drive performance optimizations.
- Aggregated browsing history in Microsoft browsers: This data is used to refine Bing’s search algorithms for more effective search results.
If your device is managed by an organization’s IT department, diagnostic data handling may be subject to additional policies defined by group policies. For detailed information, see Configure Windows diagnostic data in your organization. For enterprise-managed devices, Microsoft utilizes diagnostic and error data for device management, monitoring, and troubleshooting.
It’s important to note that Tailored experiences are being replaced by Personalized offers in newer Windows versions. If you are using an older version, you may still see “Tailored experiences” on your device. Learn more about Personalized offers in Windows 11.
Tailored Experiences and Personalized Offers: Enhancing Your Windows Experience
When you enable Tailored experiences (or Personalized offers), Windows diagnostic data is used to provide you with personalized tips, advertisements, and recommendations designed to enhance your Microsoft experience. If you have selected Required diagnostic data, personalization is based on device information, settings, capabilities, and performance. Choosing Optional data expands personalization to include app and feature usage, and device health information. Critically, Microsoft does not use the content of crash dumps, browsing history, speech, typing, or inking input for personalization when optional data is selected.
Tailored experiences can include suggestions for Windows customization and optimization, as well as recommendations for Microsoft and third-party products, services, features, apps, and hardware. Examples include feature discovery tips, problem solutions, lock screen customization options, and recommendations for OneDrive or hardware upgrades when storage space is low.
Improving Inking & Typing: Contributing to Feature Enhancement
Enabling the Improve inking & typing setting allows Microsoft to collect samples of your typed or written content to improve features like handwriting recognition, autocompletion, next word prediction, and spelling correction. This data is aggregated and anonymized to improve these features for all Windows users. Collected inking and typing diagnostic data is processed to remove unique identifiers and sensitive information, ensuring privacy. This data is solely used for feature improvement and is not used for Tailored experiences.
Alt: Windows 10 Diagnostic & feedback settings panel showing the “Improve inking and typing” toggle switch.
In older Windows versions, the Improve inking & typing setting was not available; this data was collected when Diagnostic data was set to Full.
Microsoft Edge Diagnostic Data in the European Economic Area (EEA)
As of March 6, 2024, Microsoft Edge diagnostic data is collected separately from Windows diagnostic data for Windows 10 (version 22H2 and newer) and Windows 11 (version 23H2 and newer) devices within the European Economic Area. The collection of Microsoft Edge diagnostic data is governed by its own distinct settings. For further details on this change, consult Microsoft Edge, browsing data, and privacy.
How to Control Your Diagnostics and Feedback Settings in Windows 10
During the initial setup of your Windows 10 device, you have the opportunity to choose whether to send optional diagnostic data to Microsoft. You can also configure settings for Tailored experiences and Improve inking & typing during setup, depending on your Windows version. If you wish to modify these settings after completing Windows setup, follow the steps below.
Changing the Diagnostic Data Setting
- Navigate to Diagnostics & feedback settings:
- Windows 10: Go to Start > Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & feedback.
- Windows 11: Go to Start > Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics & feedback.
- Select your preferred Diagnostic data option: Under Diagnostic data, choose between Required diagnostic data or Optional diagnostic data. If these options are unavailable, it indicates your device is managed by an organization, and settings are controlled by your administrator. A message, “Some settings are hidden or managed by your organization,” will be displayed at the top of the Diagnostics & feedback screen in such cases.
Alt: Windows 10 Diagnostic data settings panel showing options to select between Required and Optional diagnostic data collection.
Note: Windows also includes other privacy settings, such as the Activity history setting, which controls the transmission of app activity and browsing history data to Microsoft.
Changing the Tailored Experiences Setting
- Navigate to Diagnostics & feedback settings: (Use the same navigation steps as above for Windows 10 or 11).
- Adjust Tailored experiences setting: Under Tailored experiences, choose your preferred setting to turn it On or Off.
Viewing Your Diagnostic Data Using Diagnostic Data Viewer
The Diagnostic Data Viewer allows you to examine the diagnostic data collected from your device in real-time. It’s important to note that you can only view data available while the viewer is actively running; it does not provide historical diagnostic data.
In Windows 10:
- Go to Start > Settings > Privacy > Diagnostics & feedback.
- Ensure the Diagnostic data viewer setting is toggled On.
- Select Diagnostic Data Viewer to launch the application.
In Windows 11:
- Go to Start > Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics & feedback.
- Ensure the View diagnostic data setting is toggled On.
- Select Open Diagnostic Data Viewer.
Deleting Your Diagnostic Data
You can delete diagnostic data collected from your device under the Delete diagnostic data section. However, deleting device diagnostic data does not remove data associated with your Microsoft account, nor does it prevent future diagnostic data from being sent. If your device is enrolled in organizational services, your IT department may retain a copy of your device’s diagnostic data.
- Navigate to Diagnostics & feedback settings: (Use the same navigation steps as above for Windows 10 or 11).
- Delete diagnostic data: Under Delete diagnostic data, select the Delete button.
To manage and delete diagnostic data associated with your Microsoft account, visit the Microsoft privacy dashboard.
Stopping Microsoft’s Use of Typing and Handwriting Data for Service Improvement
To prevent Microsoft from using your typing and handwriting information to improve typing and writing services for all users:
- Navigate to Diagnostics & feedback settings: (Use the same navigation steps as above for Windows 10 or 11).
- Turn off Improve inking and typing: Toggle the Improve inking and typing setting to Off.
Changing Feedback Frequency
Windows may occasionally prompt you to rate or provide written feedback on products and services. You can control the frequency of these feedback requests using the Feedback frequency setting.
- Navigate to Diagnostics & feedback settings: (Use the same navigation steps as above for Windows 10 or 11).
- Adjust Feedback frequency: Under Feedback frequency, select your preferred option from the dropdown menu to adjust how often feedback prompts appear.
Sending Feedback to Microsoft at Any Time
You can provide feedback to Microsoft at any time through the Feedback Hub app.
- Open Feedback Hub: Type Feedback Hub in the Windows search bar and select the app.
- Search for existing feedback: Type keywords related to your issue in the “Give us feedback to make Windows better” box and press Enter.
- Upvote or provide new feedback: If you find feedback matching your issue, upvote it. If not, select the option to provide new feedback and fill out the form.
Conclusion: Taking Control of Windows 10 Diagnostic Tools
Understanding and managing Windows 10 diagnostic tools is essential for balancing your privacy preferences with contributing to the ongoing improvement of the Windows operating system. By understanding the types of data collected, their purposes, and the controls available to you, you can make informed decisions about your diagnostic data settings. Microsoft provides robust tools and settings within Windows 10 and 11 to empower users to control their diagnostic data and feedback preferences. Your choices directly influence how your device interacts with Microsoft’s diagnostic systems, allowing you to actively participate in shaping the future of Windows while maintaining your desired level of privacy.
