How can I change this to where blender is saving under the correct version. It is not a totally clean install as I imported my settings from a previous version into blender. I am able to open save files through blender 5.1.1, but attempting to open the files from the file folder causes blender to open and then immediately close. Is there a solution to this problem?
Blender will be saving them correctly. It’s likely that the 5.1.1 version of Blender isn’t registered with Windows as the app to use to open them.
Take a look at the System section in Preferences.
There’s a button to set your Blender version as the default app to open .blend files with.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/preferences/system.html
If that option doesn’t show (it’s not there on macOS), then you can use the methods within Windows to register the default app.
https://cookwithrome.com/blender/cant-set-blender-as-default-program/
Set blender to register which didn’t work. Went ahead and selected choose another app from windows and selected 5.1 based on the document you linked. That did the trick. Thank you for your help.