Windows 10 may get another Windows 10X feature with the Sun Valley update. The change may isolate 3rt party drivers in a separate folder thereby fixing Windows 10 perennial stability issues including BSOD aka Blue screen of death.
A hidden feature that may be enabled on the latest dev channel insider build makes OEM drivers installations to get redirected to the separate folder called “OEMDRIVERS”. If you like to try this new driver installation behavior you will need to enable feature ID 26920259 (Writeable_DriverStore).
This feature or installation behavior as mentioned above is already available on Windows 10X.
Drivers updates are one of the main culprits behind long-occurring Windows 10 update issues like BSOD. Microsoft has been struggling to make Driver updates not impact or break Windows 10 update for which it has been getting lots of bad press lately. You can rea our coverage of such Windows 10 issues by clicking here.
As a first step, we saw Microsoft coming up with a deferral recommendation for driver updates so that there is no adverse impact on Windows 10 update releases due to driver flighting. Microsoft intends to separate and defer driver update release from OS update and security update releases. The drivers that will be deferred from Windows update release include both automatic and optional drivers.
Going forward drivers can’t be released one day before and after the Monthly patch release. In case of feature updates the deferral period will be 2 days before and after the start of feature update roll-out. Read more about here.
This seems like the second step of the same strategy. Microsoft is trying to achieve the isolation of mandatory Windows component drivers from the OEM drivers. This will ensure that impact of driver updates on both Windows update process as well as on the Windows 10 system post installation remains minimal.
You can read the probable changes and new features that Windows 10 Version 21H1 update may bring with itself by clicking here in our collated changelog so far. You can read our full Windows 10 version 21H2 update coverage by clicking here. We will keep you updated with interesting leaks and news related to Windows 10 version 21H2.