While this story turned out to be false, I do remember installing the multiplayer game launcher for Half Life 1 back in 1999/2000. After clicking “install”, a dialog popped up and said something, “If the installer says the program failed to install, do not worry. The program installed correctly.”

I took a screenshot. I had it for years. I may have lost it, or maybe it’s sitting on some old computer at my parents, but I swear it’s true.

Sure enough, the error message popped up, and the program was installed correctly.

I told the story once on Twitter, and someone responded that this was known problem. It had something to do with Windows 97’s registry updates if I remember correctly.