[geoffdunbar]

I worked at Microsoft on the NetShow Encoder, later known as the Windows Media Encoder, in the Windows 95/Windows NT4 era. I remember carefully writing millisecond code that would deal with differences, instead of absolutes, so that we could run longer than 49 days. Honestly I don't recall whether the limitation was GetTickCount, the recording API, the file format, or all three.

In our debug build, I added a registry key that would start the concept of time at 49-ish days, so that we could test that everything was working without waiting 50 days. However, before we shipped, the intrepid test team did actually run the encoder for 50 days to prove that it worked. (On Windows NT, of course. Windows 95 with good hardware and drivers was perhaps more stable than its reputation, but still...) Though TBH we definitely wouldn't have delayed a release by 49 days if it had failed at the last minute.