Why are All Windows Drivers Dated June 21, 2006?

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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I can't say I ever asked myself this question, or even noticed that all generic drivers had the same date, but once pointed out I have to admit I was curious. The Old New Thing has a brief write-up keeping us in the know, and the answer makes plenty of sense when you think about it.

The more you know...

Thanks to forum user Tawnos for pointing me towards the original link.

Why are all Windows drivers dated June 21, 2006? Don't you ever update drivers? Are you just a bunch of slackers? What's more, the date of June 21, 2006 applies even to drivers like Storage Spaces, which didn't even exist in 2006! Has the Research division been using their time machine again?

The dates on all Windows drivers are set to June 21, 2006. The version number increases over time, but the timestamp stays put.
 
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“Every driver we ship has the Vista RTM date, regardless of when it was last updated (we update the version number, which is the next tiebreaker if the date is the same). 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,” he added.
Click to expand...

So if you see generic drivers with a different date your computer is hacked ?
 
TechWorm has a copy of a comment from reddit, which they likely came across because it was just on the old new thing last week, two months after the initial reddit post.

Guess that's one way to get ad views for little to no effort, but I certainly wouldn't call what they did "a brief write-up" :)
 
Tawnos said:
TechWorm has a copy of a comment from reddit, which they likely came across because it was just on the old new thing last week, two months after the initial reddit post.

Guess that's one way to get ad views for little to no effort, but I certainly wouldn't call what they did "a brief write-up" :)
Click to expand...

That's a good catch. I always google stories before I post them to make sure I am giving the right site credit, but I don't always find everything. Ideally we should have linked straight to Microsoft on this one.
 
Tawnos said:
TechWorm has a copy of a comment from reddit, which they likely came across because it was just on the old new thing last week, two months after the initial reddit post.

Guess that's one way to get ad views for little to no effort, but I certainly wouldn't call what they did "a brief write-up" :)
Click to expand...

Updated story and link to point to The Old New Thing and gave you credit for catching it.

Thanks!
 
Pieter3dnow said:
So if you see generic drivers with a different date your computer is hacked ?
Click to expand...

No it does not. As mentioned in the comments of the original article there are some generic drivers with a 2009 date which indicates that it's not compatible with Vista. I wouldn't doubt that eventually you'll occasionally see some with a 2015 date to indicate it isn't compatible with 7.
 
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