Windows Updates for the end user are a bit of a chore. They take a long time to download, usually require a restart, and can break things or change settings you didn't want changed. But one thing you may have noticed during the process is Windows drivers all have a very old timestamp. They were all created on June 21, 2006, even for Windows 10!
As you'd expect, Microsoft gets lots of queries about this as it looks as though the drivers it offers are ancient. However, long-time Microsoft employee Raymond Chen decided to explain why this is the case on his The Old New Thing blog, and why it's very much intentional rather then Microsoft staff being "just a bunch of slackers."
In fact, Chen calls upon a fellow Microsoft developer named Zac, who posted an explanation on Reddit. And it's all to do with how Windows ranks drivers, with the goal being to offer users the most up-to-date and most suitable drivers for their system.
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Microsoft drivers in a lot of cases are the fallback option. We all run hardware in our desktop PCs and laptops that's supplied by third-party companies, and they produce drivers for those components. These drivers are preferable to Microsoft's own, but if every time Microsoft released an updated driver it changed the timestamp to be current, Windows would view it as newer than the custom driver and replace it. You probably don't want this to happen as manufacturer's driver are more suited than Microsoft's.
So to avoid this, Microsoft timestamps all drivers with the Windows Vista Release To Manufacturing (RTM) date, which is June 21, 2006. The Vista RTM was chosen because, "since only drivers as far back as Vista are compatible with new versions of Windows, every driver should have a date newer than Vista RTM, preserving the driver you installed as the best ranked driver."
Updated Windows drivers from Microsoft do carry a new version number to differentiate them (and ensure any Microsoft drivers you are relying on do get updated), but the Vista RTM date will always be used. At least, until a version of Windows appears that no longer offers compatibility with older versions of Windows.
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