Funny or weird error messages from a development environment/application

Question

What is the funniest or weirdest error message you've got from a development environment/application?

For example:

• Catastrophic failure
• 'null' is null or not an object

Answer 1

From MS SQL:

Transaction doomed in trigger. Batch has been aborted.

Answer 2

My favorite:

"The error message cannot be displayed"

Answer 3

Not development, but production. And the message was in the code.

"If you ever see a window with this message, it means there were some bugs we didn't think of. Make a screenshot and mail it to us with your customer-ID and we'll refund your money"

Answer 4

I always do a double-take when Eclipse tells me: "Cannot convert type foo to type foo." Of course, if it would speak up when I import baz.bar.foo in the same file as quux.quo.foo, I'd've avoided that mistake!

Answer 5

Microsoft Development Environment: "Unknown undo/redo error."

Answer 6

I have a toss up - "Kernel Panic... die die die!" and while examining the logs of the process "Please see the logs for more details".

Answer 7

I can't remember where it was, but I've gotten something along the lines of

"An error occurred while trying to display the error message."

Answer 8

Booting a headless build machine:

Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue.

Answer 9

CD-ROM driver not responding, please insert Windows CD

Answer 10

sudo can be configured to display insults when a user mistypes their password, my favorites are:

• Maybe if you used more than just two fingers...
• My pet ferret can type better than you!
• It's only your word against mine.

Answer 11

The strangest 404 I've seen, it popped up in Bulgarian and said something equivalent to: "The requested page cannot be found on the path of the page. Please go to your current location."

Answer 12

In OS/2, there was a catchall error message: SYS0000: Y N A R I Perhaps this was to help with internationalization by enumerating the first letter of Yes / No / Abort / Retry / Ignore. However a device driver install once called up this message on a dialog box.

  Error installing driver.  Y N A R I ?

Answer 13

When you tried to kill the print spooler on the Nixdorf 8870 minicomputer, and for some reason it wouldn't die, the error message shown was:

"Spooler is too tough!"

Answer 14

Diagnostic message from Apple's MPW C compiler:

"Too many errors on one line (make fewer)."

Answer 15

The last company I worked for was maintaining their own app server, and their exception page would just say:

"did not work."

Gee, thanks.

Answer 16

Click harder. [SFW]

Answer 17

Borland Pascal for Mac (this is the original Mac, circa 1986 or so, as used by Scotty) would quite regularly give the following message on compilation :-

"Syntax Error in Code"

And that we it. No indication of either WHERE the error was or WHAT the error was. Just a mite irritating when compiling thousands of lines of code.

As can be imagined this tended to produce a regime of compiling often so you always knew what you'd been changing, however I have seen myself been reduced to binary chopping the code (commenting out whole sections) to trace the error down.

Answer 18

Nice SML compiler error message:

"Error: expected type (int, int, int) but got type (int, int, int)."

Answer 19

last message in the log: "die welt ist schlecht !", which means The world is bad!

sorry it is in german ?

Answer 20

From a lotus notes production release:

"this feature is not enabled in the beta release."

Answer 21

Error: No error occurred!

Answer 22

On a WinNT setup installation:

"Please close the door to your C: drive and press the <Enter> key."

Answer 23

Error: Too many errors.

Answer 24

Lotus notes (in LotusScript, when attempting to use a null variant as if it were an array):

Variant does not contain a container.

Answer 25

Windows:

Data Execution Prevention: Windows Explorer has been closed to protect your system.

Note 1: Explorer did not get closed Note 2: This is usually followed by a memory access error (e.g. Attempt to write address 0x00000000)

Answer 26

Fortran on an specialized PDP-11 clone: "Fatal error T"

I got the explanation from one of the OS developers who had access to the (printed!) compiler source code: the program required more than the reserved 4k memory window to communicate with the OS.

Answer 27

Not exactly an error message I got, but one I made. The final project for a Data Structures class printed

Oh my god! What did you do? What did you do?

Whenever it ever caught an exception

Answer 28

Entering an absurdly old birthdate: I don't think you're Methuselah.

Answer 29

.net 2002 (C#)

"An unhandled exception of type 'System.Index.OutOfRangeException' occurred in system.data.dll

Additional information: Index -1 is not non-negative and below total rows count."

...

-1 is NOT non-negative ... thanks Microsoft Developers!

;-)

Answer 30

Not really funny, but the timing was good. That is, if an error is ever good... I got it while browsing this question.

On Stack Overflow: Server Error in '/' Application.

Answer 31

I used an in-house debugging application that was written by some long-gone mysterious contractors.

One of its tricks was to flash an error message very briefly on the screen; so briefly you couldn't quite read it, I always read it as "Silja Line", but that made no sense. Silja Line is the name of a ferry company.

Eventually, I looked at the code to find out what it really said.

Yes, it really popped up the message "Silja Line" when there was an out-of-memory exception.

Surreal.

Answer 32

Do not stare too long at the numbers, they're only for those with training.

Answer 33

I use a quote from Carl Sandburg on my default error page -- the one that shows up when the code fails to handle an exception. The error message goes:

“Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.”
-- Carl Sandbug

Unfortunately, this isn't one of them. Please contact the administrator.

Answer 34

> .\rpcdcep.h(88) : warning C4230: anachronism used :
> modifiers/qualifiers interspersed, qualifier ignored

Answer 35

This one looks suspicious:

error: 'long long long' is too long for GCC

Answer 36

"An unexpected error occured while trying to display an unexpected error"

Got this from RAD once

Answer 37

"PC LOAD LETTER? What the hell does that mean?" The line is from Office Space when the Michael Bolton character can't get a laser printer to print.

Its funny because I actually saw that error on, what I assume, was a similar make or model of printer they had at my college.

Answer 38

I love translation errors in error messages, for example when "function argument count error" becomes "error counting function arguments". I guess the translators have no idea what the error message is all about, and hope the user/developer can make any sense of it.

Printer status message "Deleting - Out of paper - Printing" all at the same time.

Click "OK" to cancel, click "Cancel" to continue.

HP LaserJet printers displayed an ambiguous "INPUT JAM" message.

Couple of screenshots (mostly German).

Answer 39

Eclipse: "An internal error occurred while showing an internal error."

Answer 40

I love when XP would do the one error where it says the "memory" could not be "read". Both those words are in quotes in the error message. It just sounds like airquotes!

Answer 41

One of our junior developers put in the message, "You can't do that" when the user used a feature of the product the wrong way. No explanation, just, "You can't do that."

Answer 42

"Error saving data. Try again?"

The current software I'm maintaining is riddled with stupid messages like that.

Answer 43

"null is null or not an object"

Great, thanks :)

Answer 44

I came across a little program that could change the text on the little one line LCD displays on certain HP laster printers. Some people were confused, and others bemused when the printer gave the error message, "Need Chocolate"

Answer 45

Error

---

This is not an error.

Answer 46

"You don't exist. Go away."

This is a real error message I got working with SSH on Linux.

Turns out it's because I was logged in as a user who wasn't in /etc/passwd.

Answer 47

The Norwegian translation of the Windows GPF error message is complete nonsense:

Minnet kunne ikke være "read".

It's hard to retranslate this back to English, so I guess you'll have to be able to understand both Norwegian and English to appreciate the weirdness.

Answer 48

Attempting to install a pre-release build of Virtual PC inside a Virtual PC machine:

You had to try this, didn't you?

There was also a litte bit more to it; unfortunately, I don't remember the whole message. That part though had me laughing for couple of days.

Answer 49

Actually a colleague showed me this one, but we had a good laugh:

"1 is null or not an object"

Gotta love IE's JavaScript engine :)

Answer 50

Segmentation Fault in C++

Answer 51

From GNU tar:

tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive

(when you don't give it any files to add to the archive it should create).

Answer 52

Quantifier {x,y} following nothing.

I came across this message working with SharpZipLib. Its FastZip class contains a method CreateZip which accepts a file filter expression. However the filter is not expressed in DOS format (*.txt), but as a regex (\.txt$).

And if you know it should be a regex, the message even makes sense. I guess the exception is raised by .Net RegEx, not by SharpZipLib itself.

Answer 53

While using the MS Visual Studio Express Betas, I didn't expect everything to be perfect, but I always got a good chuckle when I'd get an Error Message Box that said "Don't know what to do."

Answer 54

"My dog ate my search results..."

Answer 55

The Daily WTF is a good source of these. Their regular Error'd feature is exactly what you're looking for, and the rest of their articles are always good for a laugh as well.

Answer 56

I got this once trying to boot linux on a damaged harddrive:

Bug in initramfs /init detected. Dropping to a shell. Good luck!  
bash-3.1# _

Answer 57

Debugging some QBASIC code back in the day I got this:

ERROR: Blue

After investigating I figured out how to reproduce it and I was also able to get Yellow, White, and a few other colors. Unfortunately I don't remember the details, but it had to do with editing the code while debugging.

Answer 58

"too complicated SQL statement", from MaxDB

http://lists.mysql.com/maxdb/11775

Answer 59

Haven't seen it personally (and I guess isn't not unique to a development environment), but Printer on Fire has got to be the classic in this genre

Answer 60

In SQLite3,

error:not an error

Answer 61

Get this one every couple weeks. Makes me chuckle everytime.

System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The operation completed successfully
   at System.Drawing.Printing.StandardPrintController.OnStartPrint(PrintDocument document, PrintEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.PrintControllerWithStatusDialog.OnStartPrint(PrintDocument document, PrintEventArgs e)
   at System.Drawing.Printing.PrintController.Print(PrintDocument document)
   at System.Drawing.Printing.PrintDocument.Print()
   at CrystalDecisions.Windows.Forms.ReportDocumentBase.Print()

Answer 62

In a software I once worked on, there was an exception for an impossible condition to happen (sort of "if true: do this; elif false: do that; else: raise exception"). The message was:

"Impossible condition happened. How the hell did you get here ?"

The test department was able to get there anyway, but unfortunately I am not aware of the details.

Answer 63

Error: no error

Answer 64

Having a bad day at an old job, I typed a certain 4 letter word for manure at the command line prompt. Much to my surprise, an ASCII art picture of a mushroom appeared, followed by the statement "Are you a mushroom too? Kept in the dark and fed [same four letter word]". It turned out my boss had set this up to lighten his bad days!

Answer 65

From an unnamed database for Windows(tm):

"Whoops! Nothing to see here, move along."

Answer 66

The most funny message I ‘ve ever seen was .. my own. Here is the story:

In 2004 I was a member of a team making huge credit application system. The client application was written in Delphi. It consisted one big form called TemplateForm. Actual client forms for processing credits actually inherited from this form, so there was one MortgageForm, one CreditCardForm, one PersonalForm, one BussinesForm, and so on.

One day I have checked in my sources, being sure it will work, and went home. During the evening developer from Personal Credits Team changed slightly our TemplateForm – instead of hardcoding form’s title, he have added a GetFormName function call in TemplateForm constructor. The only pain was he made GetFormName an abstract function in a template without letting the rest of the team know about the change (in fact, he changed PersonalForm, but did not change other forms inheriting from TemplateForm). Nowadays Delphi warns about creating object of a class containing unimplemented abstract methods… but it was Delphi 5, and night build run smoothly.

The following day, when I was eating breakfast, I was reading desperate mail from our support and business knowledge team. They were complaining about “Abstract Error” (which is Delphi response to calling abstract method). When Ann sent a message that she does not understand what “Abstract error” meant, her colleague Lukas, wrote that she would probably understand error message regarding cloths, dresses, perfumes and “girls stuff”. She replied, that she would rather have Aidan Quinn on error message. ‘WTF?’ asked developers, and quickly googled this:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001644/

So, when we came to work we have downloaded a big picture of Aidan, created TdlgAidanInfo form class, and put a small Panel in TemplateForm. This small panel had OnClick event, and this event was firing Aidan form using ShowModal . Ann was very happy, and she planned to show this trick to our customer during some hard meeting, to “clean some air” (we were constantly kicked by our customer).

Unfortunately one of Personal Credits Team developers saw the increase in size of the executable. Since EXE was something about 6 MB, we thought no one will notice additional 200 kB… But he notices. Most dialogs was named something like dlgALL_ALL_ZBZ_LST, making it almost impossible to understand, so TdlgAidanInfo was soon discovered and deleted. Our boss was informed and there was a bit of a mess.

Since Aidan’s photo had been removed, we had put one line of code in the place where his window was previously. This was a message box with a text “Aidan Quinn used to live there” and a title “It is important to have a sense of humor”. Aidan’s story was then forgotten.

About two years later our support team has been called by bank executive reporting some strange bug about credit amount. This executive was a bit terrified because he thought he was getting crazy… he said:

‘We [him and a clerk] panicked a bit and started to try various options to get right credit amount. And we clicked a lot of places on UI and … and some unexpected message box about someone named Aidan Quinn appeared!’

We have spent about a hour laughing. Instead of support team Ann responded to customer: ‘

This message box is not unexpected.

’.

Answer 67

Once, in Win2000, I got a little error window with no words, just the X red icon and the Ok button. I pressed OK and nothing more happened.

Other error I got when I was learning pointers in C++ was: "La memoria no se puede "written" 0x098458458..."

Two languages in one error LOL!

other one: In VB6 when I was trying to share long pointers with a C++ dll: "Expression too complex"

Answer 68

"Pure Virtual Function Called"

Answer 69

Server Error in '/APPNAME' Application.

---

Compilation Error

Description: An error occurred during the compilation of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific error details and modify your source code appropriately.

Compiler Error Message: BC30035: Syntax error.

Source Error:

Line 1:  //---------------------------------------------------------
Line 2:  // A header comment (sanitized for posting)
Line 3:  //---------------------------------------------------------

Source File: c:\data\www\appname\controls\jsclasses\controlname.js Line: 1

Answer 70

The code has thrown an unhandled MoronicUserException. Message: "User was a moron."

Answer 71

The Mac assembler I was forced to use in school.

"Well, Smoke me a kipper!"

For almost every error.

Answer 72

A few errors I enjoyed:

Error: No help available for %d

Error: Success

Error: Error ocurred when attempting to print error message.

Error: Last line of file ends without a newline!

Answer 73

Error occurred on error page.

This message appeared when a new error occurred on the error page. Our webapp displays the error page when any error is encountered somewhere in the app.

Answer 74

"There is something rotten in the state of Denmark"

This was THE ONLY ERROR MESSAGE in a home grown backup utility at my place of employment. It did double buffer processing to tape, and any error would take it to a completion handler, which would dump out that message and abort.

Answer 75

This PHP error threw me the first time I saw it:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM expecting T_STRING in...

(it means something like “double colon” in hebrew)

Answer 76

This is one of my favorites, written to the console by VLC during normal operation (there don't seem to be any problems associated with it):

** (.:5762): CRITICAL **: gtk_pizza_set_size: assertion `pizza != NULL' failed

Answer 77

Both of these are real error messages whose conditions (according to the original programmer) were impossible. All the developers working on that project after these were written have come across them at one time or another.

This can't be happening!

Never actually saw this one though I've seen a screen shot framed in one of the senior developer's office wall.

Found a Ghost!

This one happen at least twice while I was working for the company. Once it appeared while QA was testing, the other we found out about when a customer called in inquiring about it after it popped up on their screen in the middle of the day.

Answer 78

I sometimes put "something" in when I haven't yet come up with a name for... well, something - and one day from this code:

x = something;

my system gave me the error message:

something cannot be resolved

Answer 79

"Unknown Hard Error"

on explorer startup...

Answer 80

In Inform 7, the code:

3 is a scene.

produces the error message:

That, sir, is a damned lie!

Answer 81

Error: "If you see this, I have caught and handeled more exceptions for you than you deserve. Failing now. Withholding debug information. Bye."

Answer 82

Here is one from a product I am working on (note it is a warning not an error):

Warning: Got unexpected '%s' exception '%s'. This is the last place to handle this exception but it can't be. The exception is ignored to avoid crashing the tool. The optimization result is incomplete and your data might be corrupted. Sorry.

Answer 83

The finger server at an old workplace (internal use only, of course) allowed you to try to finger aliases as well as actual addresses. I tried fingering one of these aliases once and received the response:

Error: Success.

What's happening is probably clear to most UN*X world programmers, but I found it hilarious because I'd just fingered my own alias.

Answer 84

There are a few that I'll never forget:

BS Error on the old TRS-80's basic.

---

Code has no affect on a more recent C/C++ compiler. I thank the compiler for not making value judgments on my code.

---

But my absolute favorite was on the Amiga 500. I popped a disk out before it was finished writing to it. It slid the screen down two inches and in flashing black and red letters across the top said:

Put that disk BACK.

Never did that again.

Answer 85

"UnbelievableException: no way! this exception will be not throwed".

I can't believe that someone wrote this kind of code/joke.

Answer 86

I'm probably going to annoy an old friend if he ever reads this, but he had a boring day at work many years ago, whilst finishing off a simple print server. It was written in VB and was for more than one branch PC to share a serial printer. This particular day he was writing the error handler.

Quite apart from:

This error can't happen.

... there was also:

Orange marmalade? No, paper jam!

... and:

Pieces of seven! Pieces of seven! It's a parrot-y error!

... and once coded, he promptly forgot about them.

It was quite some months before Branch Support encountered a strange call from one branch that had received the 'parrot-y' error (turned out to be a loose cable). That's when they also discovered the 'orange marmalade' error. Branch Support were only slightly annoyed they didn't know about them before hand, but it otherwise brightened everyone's day. Fortunately, branch staff were accustomed to strange messages from IT apps, so there was no problem leaving them in. :-)

Answer 87

The most frustrating error message which I got all the time in XP was when trying to rename video files.

Cannot rename [filename]. Make sure that the file is not currently in use.

It wasn't in use... apart from Explorer, which I was using to rename the file! It turns out Explorer is reading the file in order to tell you the file size, video resolution etc...

Answer 88

ORA-24344: success with compilation error

Answer 89

C++ confused by earlier errors, bailing out

Answer 90

"When casting from a number, the value must be a number less than infinity."

Silly me trying to use numbers bigger than infinity!

Answer 91

Seen by end users in one of our earlier releases when attempting to use certain advanced functionality:

This feature to be coded by [Developer's Name] later...

Answer 92

Without a doubt:

[About 257 errors here]
Too many errors. Bailing out.

Similar to awregan's submission, but I'm pretty sure it's not C++-specific.

Answer 93

I ran into this seemingly paradoxical error message recently in .Net:

Nullable object must have a value.

Answer 94

When i was running some kind of software, it gave me the following message:

Unexpected error: Process adopted.

later, when i contact the developer, he said that it was 'just a spelling mistake, it should have said 'aborted''.... Of course...

Answer 95

Tex has some funny ones (I have seen only a few of those myself, thankfully):

• That makes 100 errors; please try again.
• You can’t do that in horizontal mode.
• Maybe you should try asking a human?
• If you really absolutely need more capacity, you can ask a wizard to enlarge me.
• I'm broken. Please show this to someone who can fix can fix.
• I can't go on meeting you like this.
• One of your faux pas seems to have wounded me deeply... in fact, I'm barely conscious. Please fix it and try again.
• Dimensions can be in units of em, ex, in, pt, pc, cm, mm, dd, cc, bp, or sp; but yours is a new one! I'll assume that you meant to say pt, for printer's points.

Answer 96

The famous lp0 on fire message. Never seen this though.

Answer 97

{Unable to evaluate expression because the code is optimized or a native frame is on top of the call stack.}

Answer 98

The JVM and I usually have a good relationship, but it gets real snippy when I play with character encodings. Something about a CoderMalfunctionError....

Answer 99

I have a printout of this warning since I like it so much, very ominous sounding, from one of our vendor apps:

Are you sure you want to close this connection? (only time will reveal the extent of the damage for which you may be responsible)

Answer 100

From the Linux kernel

VFS: Busy inodes after unmount. Self-destruct in 5 seconds. Have a nice day...

Answer 101

Names replaced, but a fellow developer 'Jane Smith', got this error on her machine today after opening a corrupt file:

"Jane Smith is corrupt, damaged, or missing."

Answer 102

Here's one from an unconfigured IoC container.

"Could not resolve the current kernel. Wang. Wang."

Answer 103

I used to play admin on some proprietary online isometric game. When you were in godmode (all commands) and typed /goto you could go to an arbitrary place on the map. When that failed, you got the errormessage:

'Goto failed. Dijkstra was right after all!'

Obviously a reference to Dijkstra's paper against the GOTO statement in programming.

Answer 104

From the output of revisor on Fedora 12:

Hacking anaconda's .discinfo because it'll shit itself if it reads it's own output

Answer 105

The very first TRS-80s came with a 4K ROM running a primitive BASIC interpreter. The error messages were "WHAT?" (syntax error), "HOW?" (runtime error, such as divide by zero or a NEXT without a FOR), and "SORRY" (accessing memory out of range - there was one array, of integers, which consisted of all the RAM not otherwise in use).

Answer 106

When trying to install a Windows 95 game, probably Thinkin' Things, on Windows NT:

"You eediot! Thees ees not Chicago!"

Answer 107

The error message my school gives is funny: http://webct2.eosc.edu/notexist

It gives a weird error explaining the differences between 403, 404, and 410 and aimed at administrators.. very weird.

Answer 108

Windowns 7's "Blue Screen"

Answer 109

This popup alert from the Debug build of Adobe InDesign CS2:

CmdQueue::DiscardScheduledCmdsForTarget found cmd class 0xaf0d targeted at this DB.    
Discarding. This is expected behavior, not a bug. Just thought you might like to know.

Answer 110

I once wrote a .NET application which should be called by an old QBasic application for doing some magic with the internet. Unfortunately the client was running this legacy app in fullscreen, which caused my program to crash and leave me with the default .NET error box...it took me quiet some time to figure that one out.

*** Exception Details ***:
System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The operation completed successfully

Answer 111

My favorite one (wish I could have experienced this personally) is supposedly from a HP recovery CD years ago. The message was:

"No binary data aggregations engendered a sufficient level of nominal synchronicity with the specification that you provided."

Translation:

File not found.

See here for source or here for the main page of the site.

Answer 112

Acorn Risc OS:

"Killing the utility module would be foolish."

First time I've been insulted by an operating system.

Answer 113

Two from an old (now obsolete) sonar I used to use:

The DEMON has escaped

(the DEMON was an analogue input processing board)

Absolute Garbage received from the XXX

the XXX was a computer system made by a rival company. Lawsuits were only narrowly avoided!

Another system gave its error reports in Morse code using the front panel LED - well it was for the Navy.

Another error message that nearly had unfortunate results was included in a piece if internal software that accidentally made its way to a (Swedish) customer. The wording...

Sven you are a tit. xxx.dat is not a valid filename.

Answer 114

in Cygwin:

$ tail -f
tail: warning: following standard input indefinitely is ineffective

Answer 115

Error: This will never happen.

Answer 116

Not really an error message, oh well.

This appeared once when I was hunting for an antivirus:

Answer 117

As far as I can tell, running GIMP in batch mode has only one catch-all error message for anything that goes wrong:

batch command experienced an execution error

That was helpful, thanks.

Answer 118

TeX has an error: Interwoven alignment preambles are not allowed. It is described by Knuth in the TeXbook thusly:

If you have been so devious as to get this message, you will understand it, and you will deserve no sympathy.

Answer 119

My favorite was from an old job, and actually showed up in released versions of the software

An Application Error Has Occurred: 3

Answer 120

Error has occurred. Please press any key to be executed.

Answer 121

1. DOES NOT COMPUTE!
2. Danger, Will Robinson