The 32-year-old Windows placeholder that Microsoft says is now a permanent feature

Many things that we consider temporary at first become a permanent part of our daily lives, for one reason or another. As an example, I placed my first SSD on top of my case’s built-in 3.5-inch drive enclosure because I couldn’t be bothered to properly install it and left it there for years until I built a new PC in a new chassis. In the case of Windows, a stopgap dialog box created in 1994 still lives on as a permanent part of Windows.

The Windows Format dialog box was supposed to be a temporary solution

But it somehow has lived on for more than three decades

Dave W. Plummer, a veteran Microsoft engineer who worked on legendary Windows elements such as