IT House December 30 news, according to Windows Latest, if you regularly check for Windows 11 or Windows 10 updates, you may have noticed that old drivers or even broken drivers appear in the optional update section. Over the past few years, users have received driver updates listed as "INTEL – System", and although they were delivered after the upgrade to Windows 11, their dates are set back to 1968, which is the "backward date".
Most of these drivers — which may look problematic due to their strange specifications — are available under the optional update settings panel for Windows 11 and Windows 10. In a new blog post, Microsoft has explained why and how to set the retrospective timing of these drivers on Windows.
IT House has learned that there are currently three main types of driver releases for Windows 11 - drivers released by Companies such as Windows /Microsoft, Intel and Nvidia, AMD, and custom drivers developed by PC OEM manufacturers.
According to the company, the date for all Windows drivers is set to June 21, 2006 to reduce compatibility issues.
How drivers are dated retroactively on Windows
Windows Update ranks drivers based on various factors, including dates. For example, if a driver in Microsoft's driver library exactly matches the hardware ID of the device, it will be the most important candidate and users will be able to download it.
However, if there is more than one driver that matches the hardware ID, the one with the latest timestamp is automatically selected. If, in this case, there is also parallelism between multiple drivers, Microsoft will look at the highest file version number that matches the build release date.
But there's a problem — when you install a new version of Windows, windows drivers will automatically have a timestamp that's newer than the one provided by the OEM manufacturer. As a result, your OEM driver will be replaced by a Windows driver, which can break specific features on your device.
Windows drivers are clearly dated retroactively to avoid the situations highlighted above.
By retroactively tracking Windows drivers, Microsoft allows OEMs' drivers to retain a higher priority than Windows-supplied drivers.
In a separate document, Microsoft said intel's drivers were traced back to 1968 (the year Intel was founded) for the same reason — to lower Intel's drivers when they were available from OEMs.
"This is necessary because it is a supporting tool and should not overwrite any other driver. Updating intel(r) chipset device software is not required — don't worry if you don't have the latest version," Intel said in a now-removed blog post.