Developer Explains Why All Windows Drivers Are Dated June 21, 2006 (microsoft.com) 236
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.
New prank idea (Score:2)
Change all the dates of your co-worker's drivers. Set them to the future.
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Change all the futures of your co-workers. Drive them on a date.
(much better prank IMHO)
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Typical first day hazing at Microsoft.
An insanely clever solution, Microsoft-style. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they simply add another record ("source") to help make the driver comparison? A typical Microsoft solution I would say.
Re:An insanely clever solution, Microsoft-style. (Score:5, Funny)
Your idea would be easy to implement, a perfect solution to the problem and most of all it would work. We can't have that at MS.
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Your idea would be easy to implement, a perfect solution to the problem and most of all it would work. We can't have that at MS.
I laughed, too. But it has to be admitted that this phenomenon is not unique to Microsoft.
I haven't used RPM in years, so I don't know if the problem persist, but it used to be that Redhat upgrade mechanism sorted packages alphabetically, which meant that this you'd frequently get cases where upgrade candidates sorted like this:
package-name-9.8.7.6-alpha.rpm
package-name-9.8.7.6-beta.rpm
package-name-5.4.3.2.rpm
package-name-10.12.13.14.rpm
package-name-1.2.3.4.rpm
And because your packages came from hundred
There's a word for this (Score:4, Informative)
There's a word for this method of solving a problem: it's a kluge [urbandictionary.com].
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Sorry, but backdating is the kluge.
Properly identifying the resource is not a kluge.
Re:There's a word for this (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, I was apparently unclear. Microsoft's policy of mis-dating drivers to workaround their self-created problem is a kluge.
Or, as some people spell the word, a kludge.
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Or, as some people spell the word, a kludge.
Also known as literate people. [oxforddictionaries.com]
Kluge rhymes with huge; kludge rhymes with sludge (Score:5, Informative)
Or, as some people spell the word, a kludge.
Also known as literate people. [oxforddictionaries.com]
So, some random site decided to grab the URL of "oxford dictionaries", I assume to mislead people into thinking that this is the Oxford English Dictionary [oed.com]
Don't slashdotters know about the Jargon File anymore? (here [jargon-file.org] or here [dourish.com] or here [catb.org].) It's sad how classic hacker history is so quickly forgotten.
http://www.catb.org/jargon/htm... [catb.org] : kludge
1. /kluhj/ n. Incorrect (though regrettably common) spelling of kluge [catb.org] (US). These two words have been confused in American usage since the early 1960s, and widely confounded in Great Britain since the end of World War II.
In English, the soft "g" is pronounced as if it has a "d" in front of it. Kluge rhymes with huge. Kludge, on the other hand, would rhyme with sludge or judge.
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Kluge vs Kludge:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki... [wiktionary.org]
Re:There's a word for this (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a word for this method of solving a problem: it's a kluge [urbandictionary.com].
Exactly what I came here to say.
Microsoft Developers have got to be the laziest on the planet. EVERYTHING that MS does is done for the ease of their Developers, regardless of what hoops or inconvenience it causes the User.
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Microsoft Developers have got to be the laziest on the planet. EVERYTHING that MS does is done for the ease of their Developers, regardless of what hoops or inconvenience it causes the User.
Given that in the this case the kludge only affects Microsoft developers, it forces other developers and users to go through exactly zero hoops.
Microsoft backdates their drivers so that they don't win timestamps and will only win on version compares. I think changing the order of the timestamp and version compares would be a simple solution, but I can imagine that they considered that and had some reason why that led to undesirable results. So they have a solution where they backdate their drivers and nob
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Microsoft Developers have got to be the laziest on the planet. EVERYTHING that MS does is done for the ease of their Developers, regardless of what hoops or inconvenience it causes the User.
Given that in the this case the kludge only affects Microsoft developers, it forces other developers and users to go through exactly zero hoops.
Microsoft backdates their drivers so that they don't win timestamps and will only win on version compares. I think changing the order of the timestamp and version compares would be a simple solution, but I can imagine that they considered that and had some reason why that led to undesirable results. So they have a solution where they backdate their drivers and nobody else has to.
This is where certain Slashdotters would accuse me of being a "shill", if I were defending an Apple policy; so, pray tell, why wouldn't the term apply to you and your response?
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This is where certain Slashdotters would accuse me of being a "shill", if I were defending an Apple policy; so, pray tell, why wouldn't the term apply to you and your response?
If I were to be pedantic, I would say that a shill is someone who is paid by the entity being promoted, or at a minimum has a self interest at stake in the promotion. I get nothing from Microsoft (you will have to take my word on that I guess), so at worst I am being guilty of being a fanboi.
But I would also say that my statement was correct, and truth is an affirmative defense. Microsoft backdates their drivers. They don't ask anyone else to do so, and the fact that copying a Windows install doesn't wor
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Microsoft Developers have got to be the laziest on the planet. EVERYTHING that MS does is done for the ease of their Developers, regardless of what hoops or inconvenience it causes the User.
Given that in the this case the kludge only affects Microsoft developers, it forces other developers and users to go through exactly zero hoops.
Microsoft backdates their drivers so that they don't win timestamps and will only win on version compares. I think changing the order of the timestamp and version compares would be a simple solution, but I can imagine that they considered that and had some reason why that led to undesirable results. So they have a solution where they backdate their drivers and nobody else has to.
Oh, and please tell me how this Kludge ONLY affects MS DEVELOPERS?
In fact, I am pretty sure that it is almost exclusively USERS that are affected by this.
And to clarify, I meant "Developers that work AT Microsoft" that we're lazy; NOT the poor sods (like me), who have done something horrible in a past life, and so are now forced to Develop stuff FOR Microslop Products.
Re:There's a word for this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There's a word for this (Score:5, Informative)
Is that a new word or are we re-spelling the long-established word "kludge"?
Nope. Kluge is the right spelling, and the right pronunciation. The Jaron File [catb.org] speaks thusly:
Nowadays this term is often encountered in the variant spelling 'kludge'. Reports from old farts are consistent that 'kluge' was the original spelling, reported around computers as far back as the mid-1950s and, at that time, used exclusively of hardware kluges. In 1947, the New York Folklore Quarterly reported a classic shaggy-dog story 'Murgatroyd the Kluge Maker' then current in the Armed Forces, in which a 'kluge' was a complex and puzzling artifact with a trivial function. Other sources report that 'kluge' was common Navy slang in the WWII era for any piece of electronics that worked well on shore but consistently failed at sea.
. . .
TMRC and the MIT hacker culture of the early '60s seems to have developed in a milieu that remembered and still used some WWII military slang (see also foobar). It seems likely that 'kluge' came to MIT via alumni of the many military electronics projects that had been located in Cambridge (many in MIT's venerable Building 20, in which TMRC is also located) during the war.
The variant 'kludge' was apparently popularized by the Datamation article mentioned under kludge; it was titled How to Design a Kludge (February 1962, pp. 30, 31). This spelling was probably imported from Great Britain, where kludge has an independent history (though this fact was largely unknown to hackers on either side of the Atlantic before a mid-1993 debate in the Usenet group alt.folklore.computers over the First and Second Edition versions of this entry; everybody used to think kludge was just a mutation of kluge). It now appears that the British, having forgotten the etymology of their own 'kludge' when 'kluge' crossed the Atlantic, repaid the U.S. by lobbing the 'kludge' orthography in the other direction and confusing their American cousins' spelling!
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Nope. Kluge is the right spelling, and the right pronunciation. The Jaron File [catb.org] speaks thusly:
Physician, heal thyself.
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Yes, that's how it's pronounced.
A bit here a bit there (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. A bit here a bit there and pretty soon you have saved a whole byte. Overloading the date value with multiple meanings is so 1980s programming. Maybe they could also start using special dates for other meanings too! that way they could save another bit somewheres
Re:A bit here a bit there (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, Microsoft has done that too. In their release of MS-DOS 6.22, all the files were time-stamped 6:22am.
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Because there are probably situations where conflicting drivers come from more than two sources, which would break.
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The MSI driver should be a closer match for the hardware, and thus be prioritised...
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Why don't they simply add another record ("source") to help make the driver comparison? A typical Microsoft solution I would say.
So how do you compare sources? If I have a nVidia reference driver, a custom driver from the hardware OEM, and a Microsoft driver, how do I rank those? Or is source simply MS vs non-MS?
Don't forget that whatever change to driver ranking MS makes also has to have provision with the thousands of already existing drivers that won't get updated to include a new field.
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Yeah, this is a hideous workaround. Apple's design is much saner, providing a default probe score based on how many properties were matched, then calling a probe method in the driver to give it an opportunity to dynamically change its probe scores for even more control. So with that scheme, the generic Windows driver would match based on something generic like vendor and device subclass, the NVidia reference driver would match with vendor + product (and optionally add bcdDevice), and the custom driver fr
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Yeah, this is a hideous workaround. Apple's design is much saner, providing a default probe score based on how many properties were matched, then calling a probe method in the driver to give it an opportunity to dynamically change its probe scores for even more control. So with that scheme, the generic Windows driver would match based on something generic like vendor and device subclass, the NVidia reference driver would match with vendor + product (and optionally add bcdDevice), and the custom driver from the OEM would presumably return a higher probe score dynamically so that it always wins.
Version numbers and release dates have no legitimate place in driver matching behavior, IMO.
You mean to say Apple solved it by not having 3rd party drivers...
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Um... no, there are lots of third-party drivers available in OS X. Maybe you're thinking of its mutant halfling spawn, iOS?
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It seems that this mechanism exists precisely because Microsoft does not claim that their drivers are perfect.
Seriously... What a nightmare computing has become (Score:5, Insightful)
. 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.
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. 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.
You need to shitcan that Linux box and buy a Mac.
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>It's a fucking cluster fuck out there on EVERY OS.
Yes, but where the cluster is and why it's there changes.
Linux packages are definitely a nightmare for developers, but solutions are being worked on, GUIX is able to provide transaction updates and multiple versions without conflict. Flat-pack and docker, allow distribution by third parties that are isolated from the underlying system.
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No kidding. I miss the old days of computing. These days, computing is no fun. Complex, unstable, buggy, etc. :(
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That's not how it was back in the Amiga days.
You mean the days when simply plugging in some fast RAM caused half your software to stop working? 8)
Both my A1000 and A1200 were the most fun computers I ever owned, but man, Amiga programmers were the worst. They understood nothing about making software for a proper OS, especially when copy protection was involved (as it always was).
badly designed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Programming the Windows Driver Model (Score:5, Interesting)
I realise the driver system in windows has moved along (hopefully for the better) a lot recently, but about 15 years ago I remember looking into developing a custom driver for a USB device I had developed. My background was as an embedded developer so I had a detailed knowledge of how the bits on the bus worked, and what the host controller chip was doing. All I wanted to do was send some packets to my device and receive a few packets back from a windows application - nothing real time or taxing of the system's capabilities.
I got a copy of Walter Oney's windows driver model book, and proceeded to work my way through it.
Even now, as someone who does a fair amount of web development, working my way through ten years of terrible javascript language and library designs decisions to make otherwise simple things happen on a webpage, it still shocks me just how ridiculously horrible the WDM was. The basic IRP system was already pretty over the top architectural astronauty, but I guess you could accept that they had to provide for the possibility that there would be a lot of fancy new peripherals in the future. But once you figured that out, the book went into how incredibly broken the model was once you had to support multi-processor system and plug and play. What ensued was basically 200 pages describing the most horrible mess of obscure synchronisation problems you could possibly find in a couple of pages worth of driver code.
Ever since I ceased being shocked when my computer BSOD due to a third party driver. Frankly, if the thing allowed you to get much done at all, whoever wrote the driver probably deserved a medal or something.
Anyway, with such an experience, this back dating driver thing doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
Re:Programming the Windows Driver Model (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm doing embedded work. I've noticed (and done myself) that there is a way to dodge this issue. What you do is, you stick an FTDI chip at the front end. USB to serial is the easiest, but if you need more bandwidth, you can do USB to SPI. So FTDI manages the drivers, and most windows (and Linux) PCs are going to have valid FTDI drivers in them from OS install. You then either access the chip by having it map to a comm port or there is a way to link to FTDI's drivers.
Either way, you export the problem - FTDI worries about writing and maintaining the driver, which hundreds of millions of devices depend on, and you just piggy back on that driver for your gadget. Works great and you can be up and running in under a day. (just use their USB to serial one, and connect RX and TX, and use the scanf/printf which most any microcontroller has support for)
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Cocao? Are you seriously trying to suggest that Objective-C is well designed language? Its one of the most hideous kludges I've ever seen, and for all of the supposed "power" that it brings over from smalltalk, its far less powerful than C++ was even a decade ago.
Manually calling constructors/init in 2017? And not just one call, two!
No collections
No generics
God awful mish mash syntax
Dynamicing typing when sending messages
Obj-c should be taken out the back and shot. Even apple has seen the light, but instead
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Are you seriously trying to suggest that Objective-C is well designed language? Its one of the most hideous kludges I've ever seen, and for all of the supposed "power" that it brings over from smalltalk, its far less powerful than C++ was even a decade ago.
I don't know what he's implying, but I'll take Objective-C over the C++ cruft any day. Clean design wins over scatter-brained feature adding every time. The motto of C++, especially a decade ago as you said it, "If there are two ways to do something, choose the least obvious way." Having to manually add a v-table is a perfect example: it's totally backwards. There should be a keyword to suppress v-tables if you don't want them. And 'friend', what a glorious keyword! And the way classes are instantiated make
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"Having to manually add a v-table is a perfect example: it's totally backwards"
If you mean using the "virtual" keyword then there are good reasons for having it as an option and if I have to explain why then you probably wouldn't understand the answer.
"There should be a keyword to suppress v-tables if you don't want them"
There is - don't use "virtual".
"And 'friend', what a glorious keyword! "
Not a problem with objective C since its class security isn't complex enough to warrant it.
"you need to recompile eve
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Err yes, compiled languages tend to need recompilation if you alter the code unless its in a shared object library / dll in which case you don't. So no idea what your point is there.
You don't know what the point is because you have no language judgement. I will say it again, so your simplistic mind can maybe wrap its head around:
If you add a private variable to a C++ class, it's a breaking change. It's not backwards compatible. That's a C++ problem, it's not a problem in almost any other language.
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"If you add a private variable to a C++ class, it's a breaking change. It's not backwards compatible. That's a C++ problem, it's not a problem in almost any other language."
*boggle*
You're talking out your arse and clearly have no idea of the difference between backwards compatability, re-compilation requirements or what a shared library is or how they work. Go educate yourself on compiled languages , not whatever mickey mouse VM or scripting languages you think makes you an expert on this subject. You're no
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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.
Especially since you can change the tine stamp of a Windows file by so much as looking sideways at it.
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Put the real date in the info area! (Score:4, Interesting)
Put the real date in the info area!
Wow (Score:4, Funny)
This is the type of hack that an inter is chastised for in a code review.
Ship it.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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Simple: user option.
I do like your point, though, and understand your reasoning. I've never had huge issues with manufacturer-supplied drivers (actually, I probably HAVE...) and typically default to them over MS/Windows drivers.
One instance, I installed Server 2012 on my old desktop, and Windows Server didn't have any good drivers for the video card (GeForce 560) so I had to install NVidia's...
But now you've got me wondering...how often have those quirky problems I've lived with been the result of thi
Windows 10 (Score:3)
Why were there all the issues with Windows 10 replacing manufacture drivers with Microsoft ones then? I am guessing they have since fixed that, but I did hear about a lot of complaints.
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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.
Easier to hack a work-around than code a fix. (Score:2)
nm
Typical Microsoft kludge (Score:5, Interesting)
Why ?<br>
Because, the vast majority of devs at MS can't think straight about anything - that's why we have the current state of Windows. MS hasn't hired a good developer since the days of Windows NT.
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Or even just extend the version number field out one extra .X and tell third parties a release driver should always have a value of 1 or greater in the final position, where Microsoft always puts a zero in the final position.
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On the other hand, Microsoft at least has a kernel that allows for drivers to be dynamically added to the system...
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Methinks silly hack... (Score:2, Informative)
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are now
I quoted the relevant part of your comment. Never underestimate the power of legacy.
Well, it was either that, or... (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey, aardvark pays off!
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That will be a problem when Nvidia release version 26 of their driver prefixed with ZAPOS_. Then on the roll-over they will do it excel style and the next driver will be called AAARDVARK_ only to be alphabetically replaced by the windows default.
Wrong Priority (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wrong Priority (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah that's what I don't get. Why doesn't version number take precedence over time stamp? Why isn't the time stamp the date the manufacturer driver got Windows Certified? If you think about it, the last windows certified driver is going to be the one you want, from the perspective of an OS updater you want the latest version from the most stable branch.
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Sure. Now you just have to get everyone to agree on a version number scheme and get all the vendors to coordinate with Microsoft to make sure their version numbers are in sync.
(The problem is, what happens if the Microsoft driver version number is 4.6.13 and the vendor's version number for their newer revision of the same driver is 2.9?)
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We're talking about default behavior here. Obviously if the user wants to override that and install any (signed) driver they want, they can do it. If they want install an unsigned driver, these days they are forced to reboot into safe mode, which I don't disagree with, since drivers have the privileges to do almost anything and the user has no way to know what a driver will do from the binary.
Re:Wrong Priority (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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?
Yes, because the time stamp of 1969 has obviously been altered and thus the version number should be used. Thanks for proving my point.
That's Not What I Asked (Score:2)
But why that date? (Score:3)
I was expecting an answer to why that particular date was chosen. I could easily have guessed that they were back dated to allow files with new filestamps to take priority. But why that date, and not, say, 1970-01-01 00:00:00?
Re:But why that date? (Score:5, Funny)
It's Windows, so, they probably do something nutty like compute epoch time as an offset from 2006. Since 1970 would be a negative number, some deep and dark timestamp code somewhere in the driver model probably (correctly) assumes the timestamp is unsigned so, 1970 is actually far into the future.
1980 for DOS, 1970 Unix Aways ten years behind. (Score:5, Informative)
1970 is the epoch for Unix, 1980 for DOS, because Microsoft is always ten years behind Unix.
Windows actually has a shitload of different epochs. Some of their filesystems use 1980, some use 1601
1980, Excel uses January 0, 1900, some versions of their compiler use 12-30-1899, COM uses 12-31-1899. It's a real cluster fuck.
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Yup! (Score:3)
For years, people have wondered why all Windows drivers are dated June 21, 2006.
Yup, I just checked. All my XP and Vista drivers are dated 7/21/2006. How did they know?
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Windows full of kludges, confirmed (Score:3)
I think we already knew this type of bullshit was happening under the hood but it's nice to see a detailed explanation. Gross though.
And MS fanboys wonder (Score:3)
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So then why a date at all? (Score:3)
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It sounds like the date is almost never, ever, used as they are all dated the same. Why even consult that field or have it exist at all?
"All Windows drivers" are all dated the same. Not "all drivers for Windows". Only Microsoft sets a fixed date for drivers shipped with Windows. Every other manufacturer can and does use the field. E.g. My graphics card driver: 11/12/2016
In other words... (Score:2)
Microsoft must believe... (Score:2)
You design something right the first time (Score:2)
Make sure all the existing drivers work
Work with every possible permutation of system - multi core, weird combinations of peripherals
Anticipate new possibilities even though you have no idea what those might be
Get it done by a deadline
No you don't get to go back and fix past mistakes, you don't get to create a new preference field, you have to work with something that is common to every existing driver. Kludge? It's ugly but I bet 99.9% of us couldn't have
So then.... (Score:2)
...you had to use a hacky, counterintuitive fix to cover for a bad design decision. Business as usual at Microsoft, in other words.
The goal of MS drivers was to kill WordPerfect (Score:5, Informative)
But device drivers, especially printer drivers were the front lines of the war between MS-Word and WordPerfect in 1990s. WordPerfect created a virtual printer to which its software will print. They laboriously wrote printer drivers for every printer maker in existence at that time. In those days no matter how obscure and unknown your printer is, WordPerfect will be able to correctly print in it. It also got the "exactly the same printout, no matter what the printer is" edge over Microsoft.
One way MS decided to create Windows printer driver standard and strong armed all the printer makers to supply a driver that will meet the windows spec. Apple Laserwriter and most other unixy printers had settled on postscript. It wanted to mess them up too. So it was all serious market share battleground those days. Forcing a proprietary ill-defined ever changing driver spec was MS way to deny the competitive advantage WP had built laboriously.
But it also created two serious side effects on MS-Word. They comingled the virtual device driver code into MS-Word and tried to get the WYSIWYG cheap way. That is why MS-Word margins would change, pagination would change and page references would change if you change your default printer. It was a nightmare those days. Grad students who were PhDs in Engineering went completely bonkers trying to get a paper correctly printed in MS-Word, and worse the TeX guys were laughing at them.
The second effect was hard pressed printer makers hacked out really bad printer drivers. Many of them took some approximate driver from some place and hacked out something that barely worked and passed basic acceptance test. Then bug reports would pour in, they will fix some of them, then post updated drivers... the mess has not been fully sorted out even now.
The damage Microsoft did by deliberately sabotaging inter-operability is incalculable.
It's completely different in Linux (Score:2)
It is interesting to see this is complete opposite of what we have on Linux. Here, vendor drivers are almost universally shitty. If they work at all, vendors tend to ship drivers compiled for ancient and/or specific kernels.
On Linux, if you have driver in kernel, you almost always want it instead of vendor provided one. nVidia GPU driver may be the only exception.
How 'bout incorporating the driver in the hardware (Score:2)
It's very simple actually.. (Score:2)
That's when we last touched them.
Mac OS? (Score:2)
I hate to say it, but really it should "just work".. given Microsoft *can* control what drivers are installed, I simply don't understand why hardware drivers aren't maintained through a quality controlled channel, let people choose which version they want, but otherwise have a default currently supported (and tested in at least the most common hardware configurations) driver that is delivered through windows updates or something...
One of the reason's I (as a Windows admin, and Linux admin too) enjoy usi
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Hold on. Let's say that a virus modifies the older driver which, of course, now bumps the timestamp to the day of the infection. This would move the older - now infected - driver up in the priority? Wow. That explains so much.
As Raymond Chen would say, "That rather involved being on the other side of the airtight hatchway". If you can modify the driver, who cares about the timestamp, just modify the actual driver being used and be done with it.