A former employee of Microsoft explains one of the most annoying bugs in Windows: '39 Years to Copy a File'
Windows 95, Windows XP, and Windows 7 are operating systems that have provided amazing services to millions of users, but like everything, nothing is perfect.
Over time, Microsoft has evolved in various aspects and solved most of the problems that were mentioned in the new versions, such as Windows 10 and Windows 11, which are the latest.
However, there is one particular drawback that is difficult to overcome regardless of the type of operating system, and that is the estimated time to copy files.
This window that appears with the calculations of minutes or hours it takes to transfer data was not accurate at all and became annoying for many. Given this doubt, a former Windows engineer explained how this process works and why the error occurs.
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The estimated time to transfer Windows files is not accurate because the shell does not allow it.
Dave W. Plummer, an expert who worked on Windows until 2003, explained that he was working on the task manager and the file transfer progress bar.
Given the many complaints that have been made over the years about the progress of this function, I have decided to share why this happens in a video on my official YouTube channel.
Highlighting that one of the biggest problems with Windows XP is that it sometimes offers ridiculous wait times like "39 years to copy 180 MB," he explains that it's all about running the Windows Shell.
The estimated times are irregular because they go through a series of recent or real-time operations, as they do not have the ability to know the time through a complete analysis of bandwidth or disk storage space, nor the size of the next files that are recorded.
This is due to all the complex operations involved in copying or moving items, such as disk saturation, cache, and many other things that make predictions impossible. For this reason, it only records what is happening at the moment.
To explain this in a simpler way, Plummer gives the example of getting from one place to another on public transportation. Along the way, time estimates change due to other people riding at stops, traffic lights, or potential problems with the bus.
Just like Windows does, it can't give you the exact time when the files will be copied because it analyzes the files second by second, and that's why it doesn't show the real estimated time for the copying process.
It's definitely one of the unknowns in the operating system that has already been solved. Ultimately, this isn't a bug per se, but rather the way the shell function can work.
Operating systems now have better process bars and better time prediction, but this data may be more accurate in the future.