Comment On A Pop-Up Potpourri

Er, that would be "elicit," unless the message was illegal or something (wait, maybe in this case it _should_ be [;)])

Anonymous:

Er, that would be "elicit," unless the message was illegal or something (wait, maybe in this case it _should_ be [;)])

Thanks, I fixed it. Now where are you guys when I'm writing that important memo or report [;-)].

I was tinkering with a program today that I took over from employee X
in another office half-way accross the country.  I idly clicked
some buttons to run a test case and up popped out an error box:



        AfxMessageBox(_T("Error Reading Testing Registry Values\nContact Technical Support"),

        MB_OK | MB_ICONERROR);



What's sad is that, technically, I am the "Technical Support", and even
though it couldn't read the registry values, it fills out proper
default values anyway, and will save them to the registry.  But
this message box will conveniently close the program for you. 
*cries*.

My all-time favorite is in Windows, download something, and save it to the desktop. When done, click 'open folder'. You'll get a message box: "The item specified is on the desktop [OK]". You click ok, and it all goes away. Gee, thanks Windows... way to be completely NOT helpful.

When you'd cancel a print job on my old printer, it'd pop up a message that said "Are you sure you want to cancel the print job?" and your choices were OK or Cancel.

On a Christian Games CD I had, this is what'd pop up when you quit the game:

Using an older version of DevEdit, we ran across a message box that poped up.  it read "Die!".  I'm guessing this was one of their debug messages within their javascript.  I'm just happy we found it before one of our customers did.

I've been clicking the Techbase dialog box for 20 minutes now.....

sombody help!!!!!!

I can't stop clicking it!!

After reading about the "Steve Rule", I decided to check it at our software development meeting yesterday.  Pathetically, the rule proved all too true...

Spot the WTF's. :)  The first three actually did go together.

I was working on a rather large log file:

in Microsoft Word...

But when I was done...

 

Unrelated, but I found this in a nearby folder. I love saving WTF messages, but most are at home.

 

It pretty much speaks for itself.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the following, when Windows XP suddenly
and inexplicably reboots, destroying all my unsaved work, and comes
back with this dialog: "The system has recovered from a serious error."
Uh, no you didn't! You crashed and burned on a serious error!

The absolute best error message I have ever seen thrown by a twain driver "The operation completed successfully."

Anonymous:

Personally, I'm a big fan of the following, when Windows XP suddenly and inexplicably reboots, destroying all my unsaved work, and comes back with this dialog: "The system has recovered from a serious error." Uh, no you didn't! You crashed and burned on a serious error!

I wish I would get some messages from XP.  Today, Explorer.exe was running at 99% CPU for about 10 minutes straight. [I know I know, if Windows crashes it's generally the users fault.  I shouldn't have tried to create a 8K zip file, you're right.]  Finally I decided it wasn't coming back, so I killed explorer.exe.  That's a crap shoot.  Sometimes it just rearranges the task bar but this time, total freeze no task manager, nothing.  Had to kill the power.  No complaints when I restarted.

just as an fyi, whenever i've had explorer.exe issues, once i've killed him, i go to Start->Run and start explorer.exe manually.

 

works most of the time.....

Anonymous:

just as an fyi, whenever i've had explorer.exe issues, once i've killed him, i go to Start->Run and start explorer.exe manually.

works most of the time.....

Usually it comes back up.  It started to but then everything locked up.  There was no 'Start' menu and I couldn't even get a reponse from ctrl-alt-del.

The other thing I love about Windows is that when I go home, I must reboot my laptop.  If I try to plug it into the network after it was connected to a different network, the whole machine is brought to it's knees.  Every action is slow motion.  I'll never understand my the explorer must check the CD-ROM and the network before I can look at my hard-drive.

dubwai:

Anonymous:

Personally, I'm a big
fan of the following, when Windows XP suddenly and inexplicably
reboots, destroying all my unsaved work, and comes back with this
dialog: "The system has recovered from a serious error." Uh, no you
didn't! You crashed and burned on a serious error!

I wish I would get some messages from XP.  Today, Explorer.exe
was running at 99% CPU for about 10 minutes straight. [I know I
know, if Windows crashes it's generally the users fault.  I
shouldn't have tried to create a 8K zip file, you're right.] 
Finally I decided it wasn't coming back, so I killed
explorer.exe.  That's a crap shoot.  Sometimes it just
rearranges the task bar but this time, total freeze no task manager,
nothing.  Had to kill the power.  No complaints when I
restarted.

One way to alleviate this problem is to turn on the option to "launch
explorer windows in a seperate process".  What happens in that
when opening several folders, you'll use up more ram, but if one folder
crashes, the rest are left okay.  The program CachemanXP will also
allow you to launch your taskbar in a seperate process so that if
explorer gets nuked, your taskbar icons won't crash along with it.

Anonymous:

Personally, I'm a big fan of the following, when Windows XP suddenly
and inexplicably reboots, destroying all my unsaved work, and comes
back with this dialog: "The system has recovered from a serious error."
Uh, no you didn't! You crashed and burned on a serious error!

I guess it's expecting a pat on the back for not corrupting the registry ala 98.



The one I've been dealing with lately is:



Besides the obvious first response (fuck you, borland), it turns into a real wtf because every click after it shows up brings it back. You can't change anything, you can't save, you can't even exit without task manager. It happens about 3-4 times a week that I'm sure of, probably more, and the company's been no help yet.

Charles Nadolski:

One way to alleviate this problem is to turn on the option to "launch explorer windows in a seperate process".  What happens in that when opening several folders, you'll use up more ram, but if one folder crashes, the rest are left okay.  The program CachemanXP will also allow you to launch your taskbar in a seperate process so that if explorer gets nuked, your taskbar icons won't crash along with it.

Thanks for the info.  Technically, I'm not supposed to dick around like that on my machine (outsourcing is GREAT!) but I probably have the rights.

These are all awesome candidates for the Flickr Computer Errors group. Feel free to upload there.

These are all awesome. You guys should post them in this Flickr group pool:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/errors/



-Travis

d'oh!

I was too slow i guess ;-)

foxyshadis:

The one I've been dealing with lately is:





Besides the obvious first response (fuck you, borland), it turns into a
real wtf because every click after it shows up brings it back. You
can't change anything, you can't save, you can't even exit without task
manager.

I encountered a similar one when I was using win98 with winamp and the
"this program has crashed and needs to be closed. [close] [details]"
dialog kept re-appearing. Really annoying because it's an always-on-top
dialog and only reset helped (task manager or regular reboot made
windows freeze - thanks win98)

not so long ago, i've seen the scariest thing - Windows XP's task manager, and next to its title [not responding]



also, today i tried to install MS BootVis while installing
Visual Studio in the background. BootVis's installation notified me
that it can't continue, because something else is installing ... well,
okay, we'll try again later, so i hit the "abort installation".

and then the installer asked "are you sure you want to abort the installation?"

er, well, mr. installer, it was your idea at first, but never mind...

Chris Lundie:

It pretty much speaks for itself.

Chris, I guess you should just feel lucky that the lack of an error message didn’t *itself* generate an error message. With even more exclamation points.

If you give extra points for frequency, it’s hard to top the old “Illegal operation” error from Windows 95/98. I mean, why not say what it *really* means?

“Program broke. No, there’s nothing you can do about it now. And no, there’s nothing you can do to predict if it will happen again.”

No wonder users get in the habit of ignoring message boxes.

I remember the days of DOS when, if you wanted a program to crash, you had to write the code yourself.

--RA

I got one at work--"Symantec could not open the dialog box!"  Oh, really?

Here's a great one:

That one I got the screenshot for was for ATI drivers I
downloaded.  Why it wants a disk in my CF reader is beyond
me.  (My CD is drive D:).  I guess that's a double-WTF.

One of my personal favorties that I have gotten over the years.

This brings back memories of the late, lamented iArchitects "Interface
Hall of Shame" website (while there are several
archives
of the site around, and even a
downloadable
PDF file of it's contents, the original is long gone and there
haven't been
any new entries in years). Each of these would have had a place there,
I'm sure.

Unfortunately I didn't take a screen grab, but a couple of years ago I
go an interesting error from Outlook Express:  "The operation
could not be completed because the operation completed successfully."

I work for a .edu and we used to be all tokenring.  Used to get
this gem now and then.  It wasn't kidding, either.  It would
refuse to ever touch that device again until you registry-hacked
windows or reinstalled the whole damn thing.  F you, windows.



-m

But. But. But. Aren't Microsoft pushing the new slogan :

Windows - "It just works"

Muahaahahahahahahaha!

Simon

Hey it's truth in advertisement! It's all in how you place the emphasis: It just works. Barely, but it does.

I forgot to add that this applies equally to Linux and MacOS. Every OS sucks...



It also occurred to me for MS and Apple that it could also be a
statement of security through obscurity, or perhaps an admission of
mystification: It just works. We don't know how and we would tell
you if we knew. Stop asking so many questions.

I just HAD to sign up to post my little WTF:

Anonymous:

I work for a .edu and we used to be all tokenring.  Used to get
this gem now and then.  It wasn't kidding, either.  It would
refuse to ever touch that device again until you registry-hacked
windows or reinstalled the whole damn thing.  F you, windows.

It's probably not the worst policy; you wouldn't want a bad driver to
never let you startup again. But having no "Yes I understand, now
enable the ^%@&! thing again!" is a definite wtf.

I sometimes get an error box popping up really briefly when I shutdown my machine saying that svchost.exe crashed. I don't mind, it doesn't happen very often.

Then all of a sudden a few weeks ago when I start my machine I get all those 'Send your error to Microsoft' boxes popping up for errors that occurred up to half a year ago... WTF. Delayed error reporting?

Drak

You probably don't need the application.  If you hit ctrl-alt-del
and go to the task manager, which you had to do to kill explorer
anyway, from the applications tab you can start a new program. 
Whenever explorer doesn't come back up after I kill it, this is what I
do.  Just right click on the applications list and select new
process (I think.... I'm not real sure because I'm on a Czech system.
The Czech translates to new task.) and then a run dialog will pop up.
Just enter explorer and you're off to the races.

Ok, couldn't find my original note about it. But once Windows 3.1 (and DOS for that matter) crashed to a black screen.
Written there was just one message (rouhgly translated back from German):

"EMM386 has experienced a protetction error at address foo:bar.
To prevent a possible loss of data, the machine has been stopped."

Then you had to power-cycle the damn thing....
All I could think was: "Well, thanks then for protecting my data !"

 

Here's a great related WTF from InstallShield that happened this morning:-

 



"The error" ?!?

In fact it is "severe, the error" :)

It's because it's THE error. The ultimate error! The error that makes all other errors look pale in comparison. Yeah!

Except for that catastrophic failure.

Anonymous:

But. But. But. Aren't Microsoft pushing the new slogan : Windows - "It just works" Muahaahahahahahahaha! Simon

[:D]  Me Likes! [:P]

matejcik:

not so long ago, i've seen the scariest thing - Windows XP's task manager, and next to its title [not responding]



also, today i tried to install MS BootVis while installing
Visual Studio in the background.

Just as a warning, don't use BootVis in Windows XP service pack 2.  It will crash and burn.

Anonymous:

Here's a great related WTF from InstallShield that happened this morning:-
 

"The error" ?!?

if you've ever tried programming InstallShield's script language with out any documentation (coz there is next to none) you'd understand this error!

 

Schol-R-LEA:

I forgot to add that this applies equally to Linux and MacOS. Every OS sucks...

"Every OS Sucks" is a song by "Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie".  I
think their site is www.trollxp.com but I'm not sure.  You may
find it very humorous :D

I remember Win9x always irking the hell out of me when it would just
crap out and reboot itself, then chastise me for not shutting down
properly.

AutoCAD gives this error message (all in one message box, with an OK button):

"You have at least one Windows System Printer configured for Microsoft Document Imaging Writer Port, so the HDI driver cannot open Microsoft Document Imaging Writer Port directly.  The output will be spooled through a System Printer, which usually works fine.  (We have tried to select a System Printer that will not corrupt the output.)  The HDI I/O port configuration will not, however, take effect.  To allow direct output to Microsoft Document Imaging Writer Port, all System Printers configured to use Microsoft Imaging Writer Port must be reconfigured not to use Microsoft Document Imaging Writer Port.  The appearance of this dialog may be controlled in Tools/Options/Plotting."

(posted as text instead of image for formatting)

Aside from the sheer length of this message (in ONE message box), take note:

"usually works fine" -- boy, that's a real vote of confidence

"tried to select a System Printer that will not corrupt the output" -- ehhhhhhh

"will not, however, take" -- so an English major wrote this error message while reading Strunk & White's Elements of Style.

"The appearance of this dialog ..." -- WTF is the option?  "Don't show asinine long-ass error message that noone can possibly understand?"

...and look at how many times it repeats the phrase "Microsfot Document Imaging Writer Port"...

Such a classic WTF.  Whoever put this message in needs a quick, hard run-in with a blunt object.

A dutch medical application once gave me this and I saved it because it was a
good laugh:





The rather boring explanation is that the dutch designer/developer did not know the word 'Gender'...

Best one I ever saw was on an old VMS system that was chugging away in
a server room I was working in. The message was (I paraphrase)



There is no tape in the backup tape drive, your backup will take an indefinite amount of time..





Note that NOTHING ever failed on VMS :)