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I consider myself very knowledgeable in most aspects of computers. Typically, when I encounter an error message, I am able to determine, for the most part, what the error means and how to go about correcting the fault that caused it. But now and again, an error will appear that simply defies all logic or explanation. A message so cryptic, no information can be derived from it. So, this is a place to share errors that left us positively awestruck. Maybe together, we can discern some semblance of meaning from these tidbits of unadulterated insanity. My first contribution is a recent issue encountered whilst installing Adobe Flash on a netbook. As the installation reached approximately its 25% mark, I was greeted with the following bit of wisdom: "ERROR: Catastrophic failure."  Clicking OK instantly terminated the installer. After some deduction I determined the disk the TEMP folders were located was full. Simple enough. Then at work today (at a small store), I was using the handheld inventory/ordering machine, which runs some configuration of WinCE. Normally, this thing spits out perfectly logical messages, but this one... well, I just don't know what to make of it. I did solve the problem, but that did nothing to explain what the problem WAS. Behold: "ERROR: A device is a life. Exchange, please."  EDIT: And before I forget... "The application Unknown has encountered an error of type Unknown in module Unknown."
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Jul 31, 2011 16:15
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 01:14 |
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Epicenter posted:My first contribution is a recent issue encountered whilst installing Adobe Flash on a netbook. As the installation reached approximately its 25% mark, I was greeted with the following bit of wisdom: Adobe couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag with holes in all five sides. I'm surprised they bothered with an error dialog at all instead of just crashing out entirely. More fun.
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Jul 31, 2011 17:33
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The best error message is "ERROR: Keyboard not detected. Press F1 to continue"
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Jul 31, 2011 17:35
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I've come across many over the years, but recently one of my users got an error in our time tracking software. This, in and of itself, isn't uncommon. The error, however, caught me a bit off-guard. Picture a typical Windows error dialog with the red circle with white X in it that says: "Impossible happened." I just... I just don't know, man. I also once got an error in IE (I think) that read something like China 2504 Ireland 6. Also no clue there and I've never seen it since.
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Jul 31, 2011 17:41
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Pvt. Public posted:I also once got an error in IE (I think) that read something like China 2504 Ireland 6. Also no clue there and I've never seen it since. That sounds like some kind of insane soccer joke.
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Jul 31, 2011 18:01
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One from engrish.com that I've always enjoyed: "Scanner something error happen"
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Jul 31, 2011 18:37
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 Also GHC will throw the "impossible happened" error on occasion, but at least it then dumps the raw info in the console too.
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Jul 31, 2011 18:37
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Epicenter posted:That sounds like some kind of insane soccer joke. I was thinking maybe a Civilization-style Economic power joke. Broken Knees Club posted:Also GHC will throw the "impossible happened" error on occasion, but at least it then dumps the raw info in the console too. Yeah this shithouse software just gives you that dialog then manages to somehow lock up the SQL instance running the database behind it. The whole server, not just the one database. I have never been able to determine WTF it is doing. And the software window open on the local machine won't shut down cleanly. You have to kill the process with kill.exe because Task Manager will swear it can't close the process. Here's the error dialog: 
Pvt. Public fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jul 31, 2011 |
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Jul 31, 2011 18:42
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There's always this one: Best seen on local cable tv channels that were powered by an Amiga.
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Jul 31, 2011 18:50
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I used to see "Unable to drill on the field as the graph is out of sync with the cockpit" in metrics software I used at an old job.
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Jul 31, 2011 19:17
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Not exactly an error message... A few times in various programs I'll get the old "press any key to continue" except only specific keys work. Usually spacebar and enter. So it's not ANY key then is it?! Once I had that in a program and no keys worked. Must have tried half the keys on the keyboard and couldn't get it to do a drat thing. Turned out that the "press any key to continue" was an invisible button you have to click. 
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Jul 31, 2011 19:50
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An Error Has Occured Error Message: An Error Has Occured. Description: An unxpected error occured. Details: There was an unexpected error. Click here for more details (leads to web page with "An unexpected error occured. Search for more unexpected errors here.) And as the icing on the cake, they usually follow up with "was this helpful?" comment boxes.
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Jul 31, 2011 20:21
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Our ticketing system absolutely cannot cope with resuming from suspend. When it comes back up it will look like it's working, but the email and ticket lists don't actually update. When you try to open one the program will completely freeze for 5 minutes, then display a completely blank error box. Clicking through that and the 3 that follow finally yields a message: Out of memory.
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Jul 31, 2011 21:15
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I was talking to my EE cousin recently and he knows some people who used to program cell phone software. I don't mean iPhone apps, I mean the embedded poo poo in older phones. Anyway when it was getting close to shipping time and they had to finish their code quickly, or whatever, they would just say gently caress it and throw any remaining unhandled errors to the "Carrier Lost Signal" exception handler 
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Jul 31, 2011 21:59
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I'm not confused as to what this error is telling me, but it definitely left me particularly shocked as it was as unexpected as it was abrupt:
Wells fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jul 31, 2011 |
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Jul 31, 2011 22:22
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Someone posted this on the forums a few weeks ago and I thought it was hilarious; I've decided whenever my new winforms app throws an error I'm just going to display it instead of a relevant error message: All real error messages will appear in boringerrors.log 
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Jul 31, 2011 22:56
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benitocereno posted:Someone posted this on the forums a few weeks ago and I thought it was hilarious; I've decided whenever my new winforms app throws an error I'm just going to display it instead of a relevant error message: That's cutting edge, man.
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Aug 1, 2011 03:54
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Probably my favourite that I've gotten 
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Aug 1, 2011 04:08
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Never mind.
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Aug 1, 2011 04:34
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Wells posted:I'm not confused as to what this error is telling me, but it definitely left me particularly shocked as it was as unexpected as it was abrupt: I've had Daggerfall shoot this one at me before. Yeah, I'm not surprised either.
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Aug 1, 2011 04:35
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Pasting data into excel that would make the worksheet more than 65535 rows tall gives a completely unhelpful error message: Even in 2007 this is the case. Excel really is complete rubbish.
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Aug 1, 2011 04:39
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One of the good ones i've seen is this, with a backstory though: Danish client to a Polish coding (corporation) company: Hello, we're receiving this weird error message while yadda yadda, we've failed to find it informative enough. Can You please have a look? screencap.jpg => Error:DUPA. Dupa is Polish for 'arse'
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Aug 1, 2011 12:15
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I like this one.
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Aug 1, 2011 19:23
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48 Hour Boner posted:I like this one. This is definitely one of my favorites.
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Aug 1, 2011 19:33
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The best one I remember was a friend running Windows 98 SE and he crashed with a BSOD on the screen. In the BSOD, it stated there was an "Applicasion error" and not "Application error". Nice spelling error, Microsoft.
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Aug 2, 2011 15:39
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vomit-orchestra posted:Probably my favourite that I've gotten It's either Engrish or cleverly Canadian.
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Aug 2, 2011 18:02
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Encountered an error with Adobe Reader X that said "Before proceeding you must first launch Adobe Acrobat and accept the End User License Agreement." Problem is that the EULA has already been accepted. Turns out the problem is with files that have the letters "CR" together in the name. Makes perfect sense.
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Aug 2, 2011 20:07
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I like the "Do not show me this message again" checkbox that you get when uninstalling some programs.
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Aug 2, 2011 21:18
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I remember some game used to pop one that said "You should not be seeing this" every once in awhile.
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Aug 2, 2011 21:21
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Back in school I got this message when trying to do something in Oracle Designer. I have no clue what it was trying to do to the system registry and how I was supposed to do it myself.
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Aug 2, 2011 23:51
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Socket error 11003 - This is a non-recoverable error
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Aug 3, 2011 00:43
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Pretty sure this speaks for itself
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Aug 3, 2011 21:45
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I have a piece of ancient hardware I got from a recycle center when I worked there in about 2003. Inside, printed on the motherboard, is a message that says complete with punctuation "NO NOT, HERE" The same message is given out as an error when you try to boot the machine, complete with an awesome R2-D2-esque BEEEEEUMMMMPPPPP sound.
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Aug 29, 2011 03:04
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Not quite an error, but one of the lighting consoles I support has a connection on one of the boards labeled "Mythical Bus" I've never seen any add-on that connects to it. corgski fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Aug 29, 2011 |
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Aug 29, 2011 03:56
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MF_James posted:Pretty sure this speaks for itself haha what the hell is that from?
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Aug 29, 2011 04:15
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I just got this error before I saw this thread... "The repl compiler has crashed spectacularly." I've never been complimented on making a compiler crash lol. Thanks Scala!
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Aug 29, 2011 04:30
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thiscommercialsucks posted:haha what the hell is that from? Pretty simple actually. Someone just put the term 'gently caress you' in to the remote environment string in the user account properties. Still pretty funny.
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Aug 29, 2011 20:31
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Syano posted:Pretty simple actually. Someone just put the term 'gently caress you' in to the remote environment string in the user account properties. Still pretty funny. drat that's genius!
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Aug 29, 2011 21:06
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I got one from vmware player once on trying to load a SCO vm: Fatal Error: The printer is out of paper. I have a screenshot of it floating around somewhere. EDIT: I also recall a bizarre Oracle one involving flavors or something. We see some straaange errors at my job.
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Aug 30, 2011 02:17
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 01:14 |
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Error messages never have to be useful to the user. Be happy you get an error message at all rather than a segfault or something. Just feel happy you don't have to deal with compiler error messages.
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Aug 30, 2011 02:26
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