Saturday, October 22, 2016
Error messages the 2013 list
Error messages the 2013 list
Another year, another wave of absurd error messages. This year, I’m introducing screenshots. Because it is becoming hard to believe some of these messages really happened. Also a first: a contribution from a friend. As with my collection of pictures of vanity plates for cars, I started to get friends sharing their contributions, showing absurd moments using the software developed by the best logical minds on the planet. Or so developers would like to believe…
5) Skype Disk I/O error. This was already bad enough. By not including a link to a contact page in the sentence about contacting Skype customer support, it is likely customers need to find their way through the help (that has room for improvement) or do a web search…
4) Bing search not available. Since we got into the topic of a web search, the first ever contribution from a friend, who was using a Mac to search for details of a movie for a child. Great that his default search engine was Bing. Not that great that the result is a pathetic error message full of GUIDs presented to end-users!
3) Windows Update errors. It is not only that this happens. It is also the fact that it happens frequently, with different error codes. Worse that the error codes are not unique for different problems. The whim of a developer decides if a new error code will be created for a new scenario, or if a previous error code will just be reused from a “similar enough” situation. The result is that KB articles trying to help someone resolve each error code have 10 paths for one to follow before having any hope of resolving the situation. Which is frequently resolved just by changing the error code!
2) Microsoft Store Placeholder Error File. As many other people, I received a lot of e-mail from the Microsoft Store warning me of the holiday promotions. As many other people, I’ve tried to access the site to purchase an item through one of such promotions. As many other people, I got to several “high access volume” error messages. What I got that was unique was that somehow I once got to a “Placeholder Error File”. I was even able to report this internally and, to my surprise and through a lot of serendipity, this report got to the right destination and the problem was resolved. It shouldn’t ever have happened in the first place. It is the basics of shipping or releasing software: seek for TODOs and placeholders!
1) Your computer is low on memory. It is bad enough when you have unclear, unhelpful, pathetic error messages. It is worse when those disturb your work frequently. The worst scenario is when the message is being shown in the wrong situation. Somehow, one of my machines with a brand new install of Windows 8.1 started to frequently complain of low memory despite having more than 6GB of free memory available. The only possible upside: it got the dubious honor of being the worst error message I’ve seen in 2013!
Available link for download
