Sneak was well aware that Microsoft is prepared to go to great lengths to make users adopt the latest and great... er, most-up-to-date version of its Windows platform. But thanks to one of Sneak's many loyal informants, it is now clear exactly how far the software giant will go in its efforts to persuade the world to ditch older Windows and upgrade to XP SP2.
"Whilst recently reinstalling Windows 2000 Pro, the installation stopped at 12 percent with the following message: 'Setup cannot copy the file: driver.cab. To retry, press ENTER. If you are installing from a CD, make sure the Windows 2000 CD is in the CD-ROM drive. To skip this file, press ESC'," reports reader Mark Locke. Of course his forlorn pressings of the suggested keys did nothing to fix the problem, or to remove the error message. "The CD was one that I'd used loads of times before, so I thought that maybe a little dirt had got onto its surface," Locke adds. He ejected the CD and found that Microsoft has clearly been taking a tip from Mission Impossible. "Windows had not just crashed, but totally shattered!"

18 Aug 2004