Developer Explains Why All Windows Drivers Are Dated June 21, 2006 (microsoft.com)

For years, people have wondered why all Windows drivers are dated June 21, 2006. Long time developer at Microsoft, Raymond Chen explains (much of the entire post in summary): When the system looks for a driver to use for a particular piece of hardware, it ranks them according to various criteria. If a driver provides a perfect match to the hardware ID, then it becomes a top candidate. And if more than one driver provides a perfect match, then the one with the most recent timestamp is chosen. If there is still a tie, then the one with the highest file version number is chosen. Suppose that the timestamp on the driver matched the build release date. And suppose you had a custom driver provided by the manufacturer. When you installed a new build, the driver provided by Windows will have a newer timestamp than the one provided by the manufacturer. Result: When you install a new build, all your manufacturer-provided drivers get replaced by the Windows drivers. Oops. Intentionally backdating the drivers avoids this problem. It means that if you have a custom manufacturer-provided driver, it will retain priority over the Windows-provided driver. On the other hand, if your existing driver was the Windows-provided driver from an earlier build, then the third-level selection rule will choose the one with the higher version number, which is the one from the more recent build. It all works out in the end, but it does look a bit funny.

Comments

An insanely clever solution, Microsoft-style.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they simply add another record ("source") to help make the driver comparison? A typical Microsoft solution I would say.

Seriously... What a nightmare computing has become

[Anonymous Coward]

. Maybe it's all the weed talking, but I've really lost the will to even attempt to understand all the insane complexity of modern PCs. I feel like I do nothing but constantly deal with all sorts of bizarre glitches and software harassing me in numerous ways, to the point where I mostly use the computer for the sake of maintaining itself, rather than any actual work.

That's not how it was back in the Amiga days.

badly designed

[edxwelch]

Seems like a really badly designed system to me. If the time stamp of a driver somehow got changed by accident, it would lead to a very hard to find problem.

Re:Wow

[Scarred Intellect]

Seems to me it would be easier and more maintainable to check the author of the driver and give precedence to NVidia drivers over Microsoft drivers rather than back-dating your own...but maybe that's why I'm not a Microsoft software engineer, they obviously know more than me.

Re:Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

While I tend to agree....

I was an early adopter of Win10, and that fucker replaced my ati drivers with generic drivers twice, the ATI drivers functioned fine, the generic drivers disabled some of the 3d features. It wasn't until MS gave me the option to NOT update hardware drivers, that this nonsense stopped. Was this related to backdating? Can't see it, doesn't jive with the article.

Re:There's a word for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, as some people spell the word, a kludge.

Also known as literate people.

Re:Wrong Priority

[CrimsonAvenger]

Perhaps using a higher revision number before a newer time stamp would be the way to solve this stupidity.

So, Rev 51.2.3.1 of the MS Driver, dated July 20, 1969, should have a higher priority than Rev 34.5 of an nVidea driver? Really?

Revision number having priority would work if everyone who made drivers for that device used the same sequence of revision numbers. With two or more groups each using their own sequence of revision numbers, not so well.