Microsoft reportedly sabotaged Windows 95 and 98’s Control Panel, or it looks that way – is this a worrying revelation?

• A possibly intentional delay with the Control Panel has been found
• Presumably, it was necessary as a workaround in the distant past
• But it may not inspire confidence in those facing odd bugs in Windows 11

A rash of recent issues with the Windows 11 24H2 update has left many users frustrated with their systems, and it probably won’t be any comfort for those folks to learn that Microsoft has reportedly tampered with old Windows versions to make them run slower (albeit in the distant past, and with one relatively small aspect).

As spotted by German tech site WinFuture (via Neowin), Oerg866 on X posted to reveal that Windows 95 and 98 had a ‘hard-coded 8 second delay’ when using the ‘Add New Hardware’ wizard in the Control Panel.

While it isn’t at all clear why this occurs on the now-ancient operating systems, it’s worth wondering why Microsoft decided to implement this delay.

It seems a baffling move on the face of it, but there’s presumably a reason why the long pause was added in by programmers (unless it was just a mistake – which seems unlikely, and it’d be quite the blunder if it was).

What seems most likely is that the delay was introduced due to hardware limitations at the time, meaning there must have been some issues with devices back in the day which required this pause as a workaround. Why the delay had to be so lengthy is anyone’s guess, though.

It also makes you wonder if Microsoft introduced any other similar…