{"id":15163,"date":"2010-01-27T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2010\/01\/27\/if-you-are-trying-to-understand-an-error-you-may-want-to-look-up-the-error-code-to-see-what-it-means-instead-of-just-shrugging\/"},"modified":"2010-01-27T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T07:00:00","slug":"if-you-are-trying-to-understand-an-error-you-may-want-to-look-up-the-error-code-to-see-what-it-means-instead-of-just-shrugging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20100127-00\/?p=15163","title":{"rendered":"If you are trying to understand an error, you may want to look up the error code to see what it means instead of just shrugging"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nA customer had a debug trace log and needed some help\ninterpreting it.\nThe trace log was generated by an operating system component,\nbut the details aren’t important to the story.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nI’ve attached the log file. I think the following may be part\nof the problem.\n<\/p>\n

\n[07\/17\/2005:18:31:19] Creating process D:\\Foo\\bar\\blaz.exe\n[07\/17\/2005:18:31:19] CreateProcess failed with error 2\n<\/pre>\n
\nAny ideas?\n<\/p>\n
\nThanks,
\nBob Smith
\nSenior Test Engineer
\nTailspin Toys<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nWhat struck me is that Bob is proud of the fact that he’s\na Senior Test Engineer, perhaps because it makes him think that\nwe will take him more seriously because he has some awesome title.\n<\/p>\n
\nBut apparently a Senior Test Engineer doesn’t know what error 2<\/i> is.\nThere are some error codes that you end up committing to memory because\nyou run into them over and over.\nError 32 is ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION<\/code>,\nerror 3 is ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND<\/code>,\nand in this case,\nerror 2 is ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND<\/code>.\n<\/p>\n
\nAnd even if Bob didn’t have error 2 memorized,\nhe should have known to look it up.\n<\/p>\n
\nError 2 is ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND<\/code>.\nDoes the file D:\\Foo\\bar\\blaz.exe<\/code> exist?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n
\nNo, it doesn’t.\n<\/p>\n
\n-Bob\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nBob seems to have shut off his brain and decided to treat\ntroubleshooting not as a collaborative effort but rather as\na game of Twenty Questions\nin which the person with the problem volunteers as little information\nas possible in order to make things more challenging.\nI had to give Bob a nudge.\n<\/p>\n
\nCan you think of a reason why the system would be looking at\nD:\\Foo\\bar\\blaz.exe<\/code>?\nWhere did you expect it to be looking for blaz.exe<\/code>?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThis managed to wake Bob out of his stupor, and the investigation\ncontinued.\n(And no, I don’t remember what the final resolution was.\nI didn’t realize I would have to remember the fine details of\nthis support incident three years later.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A customer had a debug trace log and needed some help interpreting it. The trace log was generated by an operating system component, but the details aren’t important to the story. I’ve attached the log file. I think the following may be part of the problem. [07\/17\/2005:18:31:19] Creating process D:\\Foo\\bar\\blaz.exe [07\/17\/2005:18:31:19] CreateProcess failed with error […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104],"class_list":["post-15163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-tipssupport"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
A customer had a debug trace log and needed some help interpreting it. The trace log was generated by an operating system component, but the details aren’t important to the story. I’ve attached the log file. I think the following may be part of the problem. [07\/17\/2005:18:31:19] Creating process D:\\Foo\\bar\\blaz.exe [07\/17\/2005:18:31:19] CreateProcess failed with error […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}