The worst error message ever, ever

Lost User

BrainiacV

Oracle 7

Bad END statement

The problem was, "Label not found," I guess since it found the END statement before finding the label, it was the END statement's fault. I used to wallpaper my cube with bad error messages from Oracle and a note saying what they really meant.

Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

applogic

Watermark, a late 90's content management product, had an error message that read... "Thank You Sir, may I have another?"

Monalot

A few years ago I was developing a financial app. I asked my boss what the program should do if a particular condition arose. He replied that it couldn't happen so, don't worry about it. I put the following message in the program: "If you get this message, call my bosses name and home phone number". He received middle of the night calls for years.

Peter R Fletcher

DEC's RT-11 OS (I'm showing my age) also had a text-based Help system. You typed: 'Help [Command Name]' at the command line, and you got a screen of text, usually with things like command line options. If [Command Name] was not recognised, you got back the single line: 'There is no Help for [Command Name]'. The programmer had a sense of humor. If you typed: 'Help Me', you got back: 'There is no Help for you'!

Bminas

I remember that! They also had error number 69 - no path to partner in their RSX system. Early networking.

Gregg Lobdell

A bad synonym for the "garbage collection" phase of memory management perhaps?

KChandos

One of my favorite error messages comes from the mainframe world in the Natural environment from Software AG. Natural makes the attempt to not only tell you what's wrong, but what you may be able to do to fix the problem. I don't remember the exact text of the message but it was something along the lines of "an error has occurred". The memorable part is the suggested fix: "Check program and correct".

kmoorevs

My first computer book ever was call "Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters". I had inherited a powermac 6100 with system 7.5. I really enjoyed all the bomb icons complete with an error number...how informative!

"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

Mikel Taylor

While a greenie, the following code was (accidentally) released into production: Messagebox: Title "Oops" Message: "Mikel Sucks as a programmer since this should never happen."

Member 4219030

I put in an error message during a late night debug session: "Oops, the XXX filter is corrupted. You must now sacrifice a black goat over the keyboard at midnight to restore settings". Then I forgot about it thinking it will never happen. This was my first real job as an embedded systems programmer and I was sure this would never hit. Right. Somehow, the code made it to production. We got a call from tech support about 6 months later who did not find it amusing. My boss remembered it to the day I left the company.

I explore code

It may not be the worst i have ever seen but it certainly is amusing. Something must have cocked up the Youtube server and this was the error message I got: "Sorry! Something went wrong. A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with the situation. If you see them, show them this information" and then there were some gibberish alpha-numeric strings about half a page long. I literally laughed out loud and posted it on my Facebook profile as well for my mates to have a laugh at. And guess what?? they did!.... :D

AdamEcc

kmoorevs wrote:

My first computer book ever was call "Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters". I had inherited a powermac 6100 with system 7.5. I really enjoyed all the bomb icons complete with an error number...how informative!

My favourite error was a pre-OS X Mac bomb-type message "An unexpected error has occurred because an error has occurred". Genius :)

jsc42

MS-DOS also had a "Screen not found" error message, which no one ever saw because it was meant to be displayed on the screen

bVagadishnu

Something bad happened

with a picture of little beasties munching on the innards of some computers :laugh:

Asday

I remember reading about a program someone was debugging with message boxes, and he made them all tsundere, to ease the tedium. Sadly, he shipped it without removing all of the messages. 2 weeks later, he dealt with a phonecall from a client who quoted: "I-It's not like I wanted to give you data, desuwa~, I just made to much!"

KP Lee

I was pushing the limits of an algorithm to find the limit of it's recursive processing. Then I put in a try/catch to gently and safely bring the app down when it failed. This isn't a bad error message, it's a failure in expectations. When it blew, it was supposed to write a formatted message in the catch block. When you get a stack overflow error/message, the app shuts down, no catch processing, no final executions, you're done, you're out. I thought try/catch was supposed to always catch failures.

Craig Baird

My personal favorite, encountered only once while trying to open a project file in Borland C++Builder 6, it went something like; "We were unable to process your request. Reason: The window does not have scroll bars." Yup, apparently scroll bars are an essential part of loading the file.

witm55

Yeah, but Windows took that one just one step further... I recall seeing the BSOD on my friend's computer, and I think it was Win95. It just read: "It seems you have not plugged in a monitor. Please plug in a monitor and press a key to continue." In fact, pressing a key wouldn't have done anything, but what has been troubling me for all this years now: HOW did the programmer meant this message - if it's conditions were really met - would be transported to the user? Magic Crystal Ball? Needless to say, _we_ saw the message because there _was_ a monitor plugged in.

That seems to be a PEBKAC problem, Sir. Why don't you go and fetch a coffee while I handle the operation?

Albert Holguin

Might as well have replaced the "ok" with "panic"... :laugh: