Despite the fact that Microsoft's business model is in no way similar to that associated with open source software, the Redmond company does offer free copies of its operating systems. At this point in time, users have available for download no less than two free versions of Windows XP Service Pack 2, as well as two free copies of the exclusive Windows Vista Enterprise edition, a product reserved for Software Assurance customers via Volume Licensing. And on top of it all, one of the Vista Enterprise editions also comes with Office 2007 Professional.

Microsoft is offering for download two Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC images, each with a pre-activated and fully patched copy of XP SP2, but one built around Internet Explorer 6 and the other around Internet Explorer 7, as well as the IE7 Readiness Toolkit. The two virtual hard disk images are designed to be integrated with Virtual PC 2007. Users are able to run both operating systems in Microsoft's virtual machine in order to test websites on both IE6 and IE7.

It is with one of these images that SD Times claims Microsoft managed to ship deleted files. It appears that virtual machine's disk image was built in 2007, the company included much more data than meets the eye, namely everything that was on the system, including removed files. Initally, responsible for the creation of the IE Application Compatibility VPC images was LePage, Product Manager, Internet Explorer, Developer Division, but it is unclear whether he also put together the latest versions shipped in December 2007.

Microsoft has failed to confirm this in any way, but it appears that neither image benefited from wiped free space before its creation. In this context, some files were retrieved, an event identified as belonging to a third party boot-time defragmenter application, as well as the Windows XP SP2 CD that was copied to the VHD and then removed. However, it was impossible to recover all the files belonging to a specific item due to the data overwrite of the hard disk.