My new, new favorite deep Windows lore: in 2004 Microsoft got caught shipping Windows XP with audio files made using cracked software

Last week I shared some delightful trivia about Windows' Bluetooth drivers, which really don't seem like they should be compatible with the words "delightful trivia." But they are! Microsoft had to make a carveout in its Bluetooth driver code for a specific mouse—its own Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000, released in 2006—because someone stuck a ® symbol in the name and caused the driver code to break.

After I wrote that story, PC Gamer reader Bill (not Gates) emailed me with his own favorite bit of Windows lore and easily one-upped Microsoft mucking up its Bluetooth code.

"Windows XP and Win 7 'sounds' were edited and processed using a CRACKED version of Sonic Foundry Sound Forge ver. 4.5. You cannot make this up," he wrote.

Well, maybe you could, but Bill didn't. This story actually goes back to 2004, when it was reported by German publication PC Welt. If you happen to have an old XP machine around, you can even find the files at WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav.

Here's the key bit from an archived version of the original article from PC Welt, when one of its editors looked at some of the .wav files that shipped with Windows:

"When you open one of these files with the notepad, you at first only see scrambled letters. Of course, you think, it's a sound file, after all. But things become interesting when you scroll down to the very bottom in notepad. Located there is a type of watermarking, which records the software that the Microsoft musician used to create the WAV files.

"At first, that sounds anything but spectacular. It seems as if the Microsoft musician or the freelance musician commissioned by Microsoft used the Sony-made software 'Sound Forge' (formerly Sonic) in its 4.5 version. Sound Forge is a tool for professionals and enables users to create WAV, AIFF, MP3 and other music files priced at $400. On its face, all that's not unusual: Microsoft uses professional software. Who would've thought? But wait a minute, who or what is 'DeepzOne'? Bingo!

"DeepzOne is (or at least was) a member of the Warez group Radium that had specialized on cracking music software. Along with a person using the alias 'Sandor,' he was also co-founder of this group, which was established in 1997 ... In addition, it was DeepzOne who started circulating the cracked 4.5 version of Sound Forge a few years ago."

According to a follow-up report from Tom's Hardware, a member of Radium had actually tipped PC Welt to the story. This discovery was considered deliciously ironic at the time, since Microsoft was publicly waging battles against software piracy, and the record industry was still suing teenagers for millions for downloading MP3s. What could be a better gotcha than someone at Microsoft using a cracked version of Sound Forge to create some sound effects that shipped with every single copy of Windows XP?

The company denied any wrongdoing back then, insisting it had paid for its licenses and telling Beta News that "a placeholder file was overwritten with original music, but mistakenly was not purged of metadata that references 'Deepz0Ne.'"

I'm not sure I buy that explanation, but even if true, it seems to suggest that the placeholder file in question was still created using cracked Sound Forge. So at the very least someone on the XP team—or perhaps more likely, an external contractor working on the sound effects—had downloaded an illicitly made file and had it lying around during production.

I poked around some old forum threads like this one and found that, past the usual "M$"-style posts, most people didn't actually seem to care much. By 2007, when one poster dredged up the topic, they were annoyed to find it declared "old news."

"What DO people consider as news?" they wrote in response. "Britney Spears shaving her head? Anna Nicole Smith? I think the worlds biggest software company being caught red-handed using pirated software and gaining billions of dollars in the process is very important."

In other old news, someone needs to tell Entertainment Tonight about Space Cadet Pinball running at 5,000 frames per second.

(Thanks, Bill!)