Microsoft explains why Windows sometimes installs multiple identical or old drivers

Microsoft has plenty of support articles that help users figure stuff out and better understand how Windows and other products work. For PC users, drivers are a common term that often comes up when troubleshooting the latest bugs or maintaining computers in a good, well-performing state.

However, for an inexperienced user, drivers could be a major hassle, especially when you consider multiple ways to get, install, update, or remove them. Especially now, after the end of Windows 10, more users are upgrading their PCs, and the driver question becomes more relevant. To clear things up a bit, Microsoft now has a new support article with answers to some common questions about Windows drivers.

KB5070538, titled "Understanding driver updates," provides answers to several basic questions, such as "what is a driver update," "where do driver updates come from," and more. While some of those questions are pretty basic, the article offers quite useful insights, such as why certain drivers in Windows Update have a different naming scheme than others:

Older drivers displayed a compiled name of publisher name – device class – version number. If your device installs one of these older drivers, the name will be displayed the old way.

Additionally, the document answers a very popular confusion point among users: old drivers. Sometimes, Windows Update downloads drivers with a very old release date, causing many to believe that they have very outdated drivers (not to be confused with outdated versions). Microsoft explained that driver dates are specified by driver providers, and they could be anything they want. What is more important is that Windows Update targets the best driver based on information and criteria set by the driver manufacturer, not by the driver date. By doing this, Windows tries to get the best driver for your device, even if its release date does not make any sense.

There is also an answer to the question of why Windows sometimes installs multiple drivers that look the same. To this, Microsoft says the following:

Device design often separates functionality across multiple drivers for efficiency. This can result in multiple related drivers being installed simultaneously. Depending on the driver's provider, their custom version numbers might not be intuitive. However, Windows understands when to install these different drivers, even if the version numbers look older or even duplicative.

You can read more about understanding driver updates in Windows here.

Source

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Posted Wednesday 22 October 2025 at 4:45 am AEST (my time).

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