This is truly unhinged Granted, but at the same time it's also resolutely pragmatic
This is truly unhinged Granted, but at the same time it's also resolutely pragmatic. Apparently there was already lots of software out there which expected to be able to write new versions of system components. As well as buggy software that incidentally expected to be able to write old versions, because its developers ignored Microsoft's published best practices (not to mention common sense) and and didn't bother to do a version comparison first. The choice was to break the old software, or let it think it succeeded then clean up after the mess it made. I'd bet they considered other alternatives (e.g. sandbox each piece of software with its own set of system libraries, or intercept and override DLL calls thus ignoring written files altogether) but those introduce more complexity and redirection with arguably little benefit. (I do wonder if the cleanup still happens if something like an unexpected reboot or power loss happens at exactly the wrong time). Could the OS have been architected in a more robust fashion from the get-go? Of course. …
Original discussionWindows 95 defenses against installers that overwrite a file with an older one100 source comments · at import