Why Can’t Application Error Codes Be More Useful?
Isn’t it about time that application error codes that are not meaningful or helpful be replaced by ones that are. I have had experience recently in several different situation where I have had to spend hours trying to figure out what is going on because rather than getting a helpful message saying “Unfortunately, because folder YYYY does not have the correct permissions the installation cannot continue. To sort this issue out please see web page …”, you get a message saying “Error: not sure why but it failed, win some, lose some….”. Or worse still you just get some number such as “0x55FFe782” which when put into Google, Yahoo or some other search engine returns millions of results about something else.
For installations it is possible to run the installation in logging mode which at least gives some more information but because I don’t do it that often I spend 20 to 30 minutes looking up how to do it. For other situations this is often not possible and you are left at the mercy of Google to turn up a result that actually helps. Surely it can’t be too much to ask to figure out a way to always have something meaningful available to the end user.