7 Funny Windows Error Messages

Anna Ferguson

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Technology. For the many pleasures and conveniences it adds to your life—it’s also responsible for an equal amount of slow load times, broken links, and dreaded error messages. We’ve developed a love-hate relationship with our computers where hours of mind-numbing entertainment are forgotten the very moment something goes wrong. None quite as infuriating as the Windows error message, which can send us from cooing over cute kitten videos into a mass murderous rage in mere seconds.

Let’s celebrate the most twisted, cruel, and ironic Windows error messages that transcend irritation and have us LOL-ing…

1. Keyboard Error

You’re typing away when this head-scratching error message appears from the geniuses at Windows: “Keyboard Not Responding. Press any key to continue.” Sorry, nerds, I can’t find the “any” key.

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2. Operation Completed Successfully

Perhaps nothing is as infuriating as staring down a big red X accompanied by an error that’s bragging about it’s successful completion. Talk about a slap in the face.

3. Catastrophic Error

There’s nothing quite like sipping your morning coffee on a Monday morning at your dead end job, and being met with this harsh error that reads: Catastrophic Failure.” However, it may make you turn off your computer and reassess your life choices.

4. D11 Initialization Failed

An oldie that still burns like a bi-ach. Windows XP embraces it’s own stupidity when admitting to users that a program failed to launch because Windows itself is in the process of shutting down. Basically by showing this error message Windows is actually preventing itself from shutting down. At this point it’s totally out of the user’s hands, aside from <head scratch> dismissing the error message.

5. Error Upon Ironic Error

Isn’t it ironic when an error is created when creating an error report with absolutely no solution provided…only more errors? You may want to chalk this error up to an original error that was just a bit self-conscious about it’s decision.

6. Unknown Error

A bit of mystery can be intriguing, but not when you’re typing up expense reports! This unfortunate and unhelpful error message acknowledges that there was an error, but like the user, it offers no insight as to what the error was or what to do about it. But we all know what the specific problem is—an incompetent programmer.

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7. Blue Screen of Death

Behold the mother of all error messages—the blue screen of death (or BSoD)! Things get real when your machine is met with this bad boy. And what’s worst is it gives you no indication of what you did wrong or how the hell to fix it. The BSoD was pretty much your desktop during the 95/98 era. If you see all blue on your screen, just do yourself a favor and back away slowly.