Poor guy
Microsoft claims on their web site that they are dedicated to "legacy application compatibility" but if they rework Longhorn too much that just might happen! From what I've heard, plenty of games already will not work with it well....
The interesting thing also is that the same thing can literally happen to modern Linux systems, where if you remove the right files (e.g. the shared object linker /lib/ld.so) any program compiled in "shared object" form literally can't run (unfortunately on modern systems, about 95% of all programs). But at least the open source nature lets you know how it works and fix it (duh, put the file back!), something Windows Update will never offer for Windows so that we're at the mercy of Microsoft's discretion.
Am I the only one who misses the days where in Windows 3.1 one could manually install drivers by modifying AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI to their own discretion and experience?
At least computers today do not conform (yet) to the ARDTSRI (Advanced Remote Developer & Tech Support Revenge Interface) Specification or else the events could come true!