Hoaxes survive simply by causing confusion. They provide just enough real sounding information to guarantee a pretty high degree of faith. The more believable, the more users willing to pass it along. Worse, this could be a stepping stone to a new trend in hoax writing - targeting necessary system files, warning of dire consequences and instructing users to immediately delete them. In other words, hoaxes may soon be featuring malicious payloads deliberately executed by the gullible and unsuspecting user.
Common sense provides the best cure.
If you aren't sure, don't forward it. Unless the warning comes from a known and reputable source, send it to the Recycle Bin and not to your friends and co-workers. Of course, it's a legitimate Win98 operating system file, so anyone running Windows 98 will find it. And many, it seems, have deleted it. There are two ways to restore the file.