the PC apeman says what I was going to say, only far less obstreperously.
To answer those asking “What do you want it to say?”:
I want it to say: “[Name of program] has encountered a problem. If you have tech support available, tell them this: [Long string of technical stuff I don’t understand]. If not, here is a Google link that may help you find information on solving this issue yourself: Link.”
In other words, don’t just tell me something’s wrong; tell me what I should do about it.
Granted, I’m not a programmer and I have no idea how feasible this is. But that’s what I want.
Oh, and when I get an error message with technical stuff in it, why can’t I select and copy the text on the error message? I end up leaving the error message up, getting a pencil and paper, and writing it down, then typing it into Google. Stone Age, man.
Well the [Name of program] is problematic. In this example it was probably the SHLWAPI.DLL that reported the exception. Helpful? It might have been invoked by a printer driver that might have been invoked by a viewer program that was invoked by the email program the user sees. SHLWAPI.DLL might not be able to “see” the title you would like to have reported.
In this example, it’s likely that some other program trashed the MSVCRT.DLL and it went unnoticed until the email print request. Shame on SHLWAPI.DLL for not investigating that?
As far as “what should I do”, this is what I’m talking about before. Someone has to write the linked article. But the net effect of such articles is to be a tutorial for user on how to be a technician. I don’t think the folks that write software are obligated to educate everyone on how to diagnose and resolve complicated problems. Call a technician or get educated the way technicians do. Don’t expect to be spoon fed everything you want to know.
There’s some amusing reading about this sort of thing under the Errors section of
http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/
Actually, that’s an interesting thing you bring up. All new cars have OBD-II diagnostic systems. When a malfunction is detected by the computer, it generates an error code, and illuminates the check-engine light. The code can only be read by plugging a special tool into a connector in the car. Most of the codes can be written briefly in plain English, like “Oxygen sensor malfunction” or “Engine misfire cylinder 2”. Seems like it would be child’s play to simply display the code on the dashboard display instead of just having an idiot light. That would be a lot more helpful than “check engine”.
My personal favourites are those error messages that are the product of a failed attempt to glue different variables together dynamically into a coherent sentence. Two of the best I’ve seen:
and
I’ve done a fair bit of programming, though, so it just makes me laugh. 
Naturally, no human has sat down and typed these things out like that, thinking it will be of use to someone. Error message reporting software is prone to errors too. The thing to remember is that errors can be internal, too - that is, sometimes you look at your switch statement and absolutely can’t imagine when it would fall through to the default clause. So you put an error message at the default because it’s good form to do so, but really, there’s not much the error message can say besides “Whoa, something is so messed up right now.” 
I find when presented with a recurring error that running the exact text of the warning in quotes through a Google search is extremely useful.
It’s nothing so malicious as that (not most of the time, anyway). See, there are people who can speak machine, and people who can speak human. People who are fluent in both are relatively rare.
I’ve actually tried that and got nothing and nowhere.
Every time I log on to my 2 month old Dell, after half an hour of use I invariably get this blue box flash up in the middle of the screen: -
“Error Access violation at 0x01997793 (tried to read from 0x040A1025), Program terminated.”
clicking on “OK” seems to solve the problem, whatever it was.
Yes but not all cars have text displays. Also Check engine confuses people enough, having a display that says P0102 isn’t going to help.
What you’re asking for is in effect, impossible. First of all, it’s helpful to distinguish between errors and bugs. Errors are a known set of conditions under which the program is unable to operate correctly. For example, if you don’t have an internet connection or you’re graphics card doesn’t have the required features to run a game. In such cases, sure, it would be nice for you to get a nice clear message saying exactly what is wrong. Bugs on the other hand are unknown mistakes in the program that causes it to perform incorrectly. If a program encounters a bug, then it can’t help but give you an incomprehensible error message. If the program doesn’t know what went wrong. If it knew what was wrong, it would be fixed already. The best it can do is to pass on as much information to the original programmers so they can figure out whats going on and fix the bug. You don’t need to know what the bug report means because there’s nothing you can do to fix the problem. The best you can do is to pass the entire error message on verbatim to the developers and then wait patiently for the next version which should hopefully fix your bug.
Why am i not surprised that the folks who write computer error messages also use “architect” as a verb?
Yeah, I can’t figure out if that post was a whoosh or not…
-FrL-
I’m going to have to apologize for that one, but I should point out that I picked up that nasty habit from my time as a corporate drone, not as a geek.
Ya think that’s bad?
At one of my previous jobs, I worked with a very specific program, written by a branch of the company that had gone out of business (basically, we inherited the software). The dead branch, by the way, was based in France.
So, every now and then a totally incomprehensible french error message would pop up. Oh, and of course, nobody in my office spoke french.
French is bad, but how about Latin?
Heh. Occasionally Notes will fall over and generate an error popup. My favourite is one that just reports
with an OK button below it. Nice.
As a programmer with no pocket protector in my stylish shirt, normal-length pants, 20-20 vision, and a hot girlfriend, I take exception to this insulting characterization. And this stereotype has been going on for far too long. However, we “poindexters” have taken our revenge by supplying you idiot users with cryptic error messages. I am currently working on a worm that targets all whiners (including Valteron) with a special error message. If you click on “OK”, a random DLL will be corrupted. If you click on “Cancel”, $10 will be deducted from your credit card and deposited into my Swiss bank account.
There is no way to delete or avoid this worm. Resistance is futile.
Do not insult those of us who control your personal and professional information.
Lib, that’s a clear case of a moron who needs to be bitch slapped until he finds a new profession. Preferably one in management, where such braindeadery is expected.
Not an error catching boob, but my favourite anecdote of this sort involves a consultant working with a couple of my friends in a major investment bank’s middle-office IT division. He was “helping” with some VB coding manipulating some array data. His code was running sort of slowly, and one of my friends had a look. To access the nth element of an array he had written a for loop that iterated a variable i from 0 to n, checking at each iteration to see if i was equal to n. When it did, he returned the value of arrayname*.
He was getting paid about £400 a day.