You too can have a Scientology-free copies of Windows 2000

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Well, here's a turn-up for the books: Microsoft actually telling people how to uninstall a built-in Windows component, instead of insisting that this can't be done, as it did with Win98 and Internet Explorer. But then this time around the circumstances are kind of unusual. To say the least.

The component you're told how to uninstall is the disk defragmenter in Windows 2000, and the tortuous instructions, which you can find here, are only given in German. What the Dickens is going on?


As it turns out, it's all dead science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard's fault.


Back in the 1950s Hubbard invented Scientology, what its adherents call an "applied religious philosophy" and what a lot of other people call a dangerous, vicious and exploitative cult. Noteworthy followers include John Travolta, Tom Cruise, and the slightly less well-known Craig Jensen, CEO of Executive Software Incorporated. And there's the problem.


Executive Software Incorporated made the disk defragmentation tool for Windows 2000. A number of Germans are seriously worried that it might pose a security problem. Given Scientology's track record - accusations of bugging, burglary and intimidation, to name but a few - you can see where they're coming from, but just this once people do seem to be getting just a teensy bit paranoid. Nevertheless, the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, Germany's Federal Office for Security in Information Technology, became involved, and because people weren't going buy Windows 2000 without BSI approval, Microsoft capitulated.


And that, children, is why, if you're not afraid to hack the guts out of the Windows 2000 registry, and if you can read German, you can now uninstall the defrag tool.</font>