OEMDRIVERS in Windows 10: New Folder for third-party Drivers

The drivers remain one of the largest sources of conflicts in Windows 10 in the 2021. A applying some of the great annual updates of the operating system , there is always some conflict with drivers of Bluetooth or other devices that require updating. For this reason, Microsoft is going to change the way it stores and manages them .

Since Windows Vista, the operating system has included the drivers in C: / Windows / System32 / DriverStore . To prevent someone from modifying the hardware drivers, Windows only allows the installation of drivers located in that folder. Before a driver is added to it, the system checks the digital signature of the drivers to certify that they have been signed by the original company and that they have not been modified.

OEMDRIVERS in Windows 10

New OEMDRIVERS folder for third-party drivers

All drivers, whether Microsoft or third-party , are currently stored in DriverStore. However, since the last build 21343 corresponding to Windows 10 21H2 , the user Albacore has discovered a new folder called OEMDRIVERS within the Windows folder to isolate third-party drivers in a similar way to how they do it with Windows 10X.

The advantage of doing this is enormous in terms of security, since it allows Microsoft to isolate third-party drivers apart from its own to block them when necessary, either because they have been modified to contain malware, or because there is any kind of conflict with the system.

There should be no route problems

Traditionally, the System32 folder has been a place where only trustworthy content is stored and which is vitally important for the operating system to function normally. However, it has also become the place where third-party developers run their executable files and drivers for a few years now. Therefore, moving the folder out of there directly improves the security of the operating system.

To avoid conflicts with the drivers, the new folder in which they will be created will follow the same distribution. So while they were now in C: / Windows / System32 / DriverStore, the new folder will be C: / Windows / OEMDRIVERS / System32 / DriverStore . Thanks to this, path failures are avoided, where the operating system will ensure that the drivers correctly access their corresponding folders.