Anyone who's read Raymond Chen's blog, or ever encountered MKCOMPAT.EXE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Compatible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Compat

Anyone who's read Raymond Chen's blog, or ever encountered MKCOMPAT.EXE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Compatible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Compatible), will know that Windows is full of application-specific hacks to maintain compatibility. I suspect every complex system component has something similar for the same reasons. I doubt it's for any nefarious purpose.