Screwed By Microsoft - Again

For the past week and a half I have been swimming upstream trying to make my Framework 1.1 application talk to (use) some 3rd party components written in Framework 2.0 and 3.5.

Yes! I know that everyone knows that Framework 1.1 and other Frameworks are like oil and water. Microsoft simply says "Upgrade your application". However, for business reasons that is impossible because:

1. More than a million lines of code are involved.
2. The "automatic" converter ran for almost 48 hours and still reported nearly ten thousand anomalies - so much for automation.
3. Even if it could be converted, the entire application would need to be retested by QA. And, everyone knows that testing may show the presence of defects but never guarantee their absence.
4. Our customers would then need to be convinced (cajoled, prodded, or bribed) to upgrade their systems and everyone knows that customers don't like to change.

Whatever, happened to the COM/DCOM rule (advocated by Microsoft) that says that once you publish an interface you cannot change it? Well, there was a BIG change between Framework 1.1 and 2.0 that "broke" many many interfaces.

I guess that when you get big like Microsoft you can get away with being arrogant.