~l~ actually it's because microsoft has a coding policy: keep all existing code intact, and never meet coding standards. this creates bugs they don't fix. ( win 9x / me still had win 3.x file manager ) the code is proprietary so only an extremely limited number of people can access it to fix it. also, remember that windows is designed for the sole purpose of playing video games ( bill gates in press conference ) security is not something they actually care about.