juerd hates software: Useless error messages

• From: Juerd
  Date: 15:05 on 02 May 2004
  Subject: Useless error messages
  
  Geeks want to know what went wrong, even when they're not in a position
  to fix the problem.
  
  DHL tracking site says:
  
      Error Number:       -2147221501 0x80040003
      Error Description:  <system>\-2147221501\4\ [TRK_Track:CTrackProxy.TrackShipmentASP]\|
      File:               /i_TrackRslts_Func.asp
      Line Number:        213
      Column Number:      -1
  
  And don't tell me they left out the real error message because that
  would frighten newbies :) There is also no point in trying to convince me that
  they do know what the real problem is.
  
  
  Juerd
  
  

• From: Thomas R. Sibley
  Date: 22:36 on 02 May 2004
  Subject: Re: Useless error messages
  
  Juerd wrote on 05/02/04 10:05:
  >     Error Number:       -2147221501 0x80040003
  
  I wonder how many possibly errors they have in their system for an error 
  number that large (or small, considering it's seemingly negative).  I 
  mean, honestly, a 10 digit error number?
  
  (Unless the number actually means something other than used as an ID.)
  
  And what's up with that hex?  Maybe I'm being ignorant, but doing perl 
  -e 'print 0x80040003' doesn't reveal the same number as the decimal 
  before it.
  
  Tom
  
  

• From: Juerd
  Date: 00:20 on 03 May 2004
  Subject: Re: Useless error messages
  
  Thomas R. Sibley skribis 2004-05-02 17:36 (-0400):
  > Juerd wrote on 05/02/04 10:05:
  > >    Error Number:       -2147221501 0x80040003
  > And what's up with that hex?  Maybe I'm being ignorant, but doing perl 
  > -e 'print 0x80040003' doesn't reveal the same number as the decimal 
  > before it.
  
  1;0 juerd@gxoj:~$ perl -le'print unpack "l", pack "L", 0x80040003'
  -2147221501
  
  
  Juerd
  
  

• From: Daniel Pittman
  Date: 02:52 on 03 May 2004
  Subject: Re: Useless error messages
  
  On Sun, 02 May 2004, Thomas R. Sibley wrote:
  > Juerd wrote on 05/02/04 10:05:
  >>     Error Number:       -2147221501 0x80040003
  > 
  > I wonder how many possibly errors they have in their system for an
  > error number that large (or small, considering it's seemingly
  > negative). I mean, honestly, a 10 digit error number?
  > 
  > (Unless the number actually means something other than used as an ID.)
  > 
  > And what's up with that hex?  Maybe I'm being ignorant, but doing perl
  > -e 'print 0x80040003' doesn't reveal the same number as the decimal
  > before it.
  
  I hate the fact that the "COM" error reporting standard was painful
  enough to work with that I can still remember this much of it.
  
  The highest bits indicate the error "disposition"; 0x8 as the lead value
  says that this, like every other error in the universe, is a "fatal,
  unrecoverable error".
  
  IIRC, the 0x40003 value - which is the actual error code - is one of the
  half dozen "generic, unspecified error" values defined my MicroSoft.
  
  
  So, this says that some COM function call resulted in an unrecoverable,
  undefined error.
  
  Ahh, error "handling".
  
       Daniel
  
  
  

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