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Comment by qalmakka | Hacker News Reader

> players have been encountering error “0x82d60002”

OT: Microsoft should be banned by decree from showing naked error codes to people, I've been fighting them for decades now

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No. The exact opposite. I'm sick of modern software telling me "something went wrong, try again later".

Unless every possible error scenario gets its own descriptive error, that error code is a necessity. And nobody is going to accept a dev adding error messages to every possible error, because localisation to 180+ languages will cost a fortune. Your choice is between "something went wrong" and "something went wrong 0x82939470". The first one is ungoogleable and useless, the second one will have resolutions on forums within a month of appearing.

Sure, I'd like every message to be descriptive towarsa the user, but that simply won't happen. Microsoft has an extensive API for formatting error codes already and if they pop up a 0xsomething, that means they were never going to bother with adding a descriptive message at all.

> Unless every possible error scenario gets its own descriptive error,

Yeah, that's kinda the point. Every error code gets its own text description. That's what I do, what my company does, with our code. Because technicians don't have the ability to look up error codes like engineers can. And even if they did, the ability to look up where/when the error code was generated doesn't tell you what to do about it.

Microsoft is just way below average in this area and counts on its locked-in customers not knowing how much better other companies are.

Internationalising every possible failure within a system, especially one as complex as Windows, into 110 languages seems needlessly intensive and complicated. Many details differentiated by error codes just aren't useful information to end users anyway.

I don't think Microsoft can document _every_ error, it's just not very realistic. I'd prefer it if they did, but lacking that, the error code works just fine.

Search all the *.h files in the Xbox and Windows SDK's for that hResult.

AKA "Partying like it's 1999"

All of the header errors are documented in multiple languages on MSDN, I only start searching header files when I'm desperate.

Microsoft doesn't document all of their errors, annoyingly, but at least the HRESULT structure gives some kind of indication of the source.

It ships with Visual Studio, but you can also download a tool to do this here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=100...

There's a web version I am aware of as well, but I think you have to work for MS to get access to it. I would speculate there's extra stuff in that one.

>Unless every possible error scenario gets its own descriptive error

I mean that's not out of the question, I force that in every codebase I use. The only one I find that difficult in is Kotlin, because it's a trash language that doesn't properly compose throwables.

I don't get it, you can compose exceptions in Kotlin just fine.

I believe Jetbrains Compose adds some restrictions on try/catch but even then there are different ways you can communicate failure.

I'm always amused to read such strong opinions but I also don't know what you're talking about that would be Kotlin's fault.

> because it's a trash language that doesn't properly compose throwables.

Can you elaborate?

Except these days when you search "Error Code 0xdeadbeef" you get nothing but blogpam on "how to fix error code 0xdeadbeef. Download this garbage cleaner app. Run it. Restart." Etc.

that's not the exact opposite though, is it? what you want is what the parent commenter wants with an addendum

Error codes are specific and can be looked up. The modern trend of "uwu we fucky-wucked up" cutesy error messages with no details whatsoever is inexcusable because of how much harder it makes to troubleshoot the error.

I like how bungie handles it. Known errors have codewords and if you see one it means they already know and documentation exists. It's also easier to connect with other players / support with your specific issue because general networking error ALFALFA will come up in different contexts than general networking error LENTIL.

I hate getting a 0x code from Windows because the search results are going to be completely useless, possibly not even for the program that I am trying to troubleshoot.

If error codes can be looked up, why can't the software displaying the error code just do the lookup and show a proper error message?

I suspect this gets pushback internally because the descriptive error message baked into the OS is often wrong or misleading. Having a code you can look up can provide a lot more context.

The forums usually take a while and a while and a lot of back and forth to arrive at a solution that works for maybe 80% of people under most circumstances, but is usually more of a workaround than a proper fix. (And there isn't necessarily just one cause of the error code, or one solution. The console doesn't know which is which without situational judgment)

The error codes are sort of a self service mechanism for advanced users who want to try unofficial troubleshooting. They're not a substitute for a real patch fixing the root issue.

Sometimes it can - the only time I've had this work, I had a bluescreen, on next startup Windows told me it was because I needed a driver update.

I think there's some path where driver devs can publish updates and link them to BSOD stacks which lets Windows tell users if they hit a bug that is fixed by a driver.

This was like 10+ years ago and I've never hit the same flow again, despite encountering bluescreens every once in awhile, which I guess goes to show how difficult this problem is.

You are assuming that this is not the first instance of this error code showing, this is the only error affecting the device, the device has internet access.

That is actually acknowledging responsibility.

Much more often I see : Oops, something went wrong

Or “you broke Reddit” style, where that’s never the case.

What? You mean, this whole time my teenage vitriol and emoji laden angst did nothing?!

Who cares about acknowledging responsibility in this instance. Isn't the point to provide useful information so as to fix the problem?

if I had to pick between error code and text meesage, I'll pick error code.

why? localization fragments search results.

I've seen a lot of people struggling to solve their Linux issues because they were searching for errors and logs in spanish and search results are several orders of magnitude off.

of course, both are better.

IMO there is a right place for error codes such as this; in failure states that are too technical to explain to the intended audience, and for which diagnosis can be complex (so that dominant causes can be different from version to version). The other way these things fail that I think is common is to give no explanation and direct the troubleshooter to the logging system.

At least you can google for the error code, instead of having to search for a textual phrase and wade through countless pages of not-at-all-related crap.

Or even worse, localized error messages. Good luck trying to 1:1 translate it back to English while remotely troubleshooting issues on your parents' computer.

Just write clear and explicit error message (like “Not a valid Microsoft controller”), you shouldn't need to Google it in the first place!

You should still add an error code, so that people can look for additional documentation about the error on your official doc, but having obscure errors and assuming people will look on Google to see if someone on reddit or stackoverflow has more idea about what the problem could be is criminal laziness.

Your choice is a) "0x82d60002: Using unauthorised accessories compromises your ..." or b) "Error: Using unauthorised accessories ..."

There is no c) "Not a valid Microsoft controller" option. Which one between a) or b) is more likely to lead to resolution? Note, Microsoft also offers phone and/or chat support to Xbox users.

Where do your two options come from, and what makes you think there couldn't be an alternative?

Also, what do your alternatives have to do with the question whether it's better or not for the error message to be localized?

And why are error codes supposed to be 32bits long in the first place?

TFA.

This is the typical lazy answer, but there's a problem here: We haven't been talking about the article itself since half of the thread though, so I don't know what you're referring to.

To get back to the topic, there are no reason why there couldn't be a good error message (there's no “two options” when you write your error messages) and if the error message is good enough so you don't have to Google it, you can and should localize it so the majority of the people of this planet could in fact read it. And you also want to put a error code available in case you still wanted to investigate about it, but there's little reason for this error code to be 32bits long unless you have 4 billion different possible errors in your app…

Or just an “Oops :(” error message that’s even less useful.

printing (errc, strerror(errc)) instead of just `errc` would have costed them literally 0 seconds and would have helped a lot. Instead they removed everything but error codes and "Oops :("

I get better error messages from the firmware of obscure embedded chips than from Microsoft Windows

> Instead they removed everything but error codes and "Oops :("

According to the article, they didn't. The pop up has the error code and a descriptive error message. And no "Oops :(".

It really should be both. Code for more information/short hand and text so you know a little bit about why, right now since the issue may be quick to resolve.

> At least you can google for the error code

And find what information? Try turning it off and on again, update & reboot, then clean the registry?

On contrary, incorrectly typed generic error message leads to that types of boilerplate. Numeric error code correctly entered and searched usually leads to either description of exact widespread problem and workaround, or absolutely nothing, very binary and efficient.

Oh I'm not really saying that's better, just that the above is the kind of pain I remember from using Windows.

The solution to every error code in Windows these days is sfc /scannow and dism /Online /Cleanup-image

An unknown error occurred.

No, error codes are far better then “something went wrong” as you can at least google them

I would rather get naked error codes than nothing at all.

This. Serving cryptic error codes over issues that do have a proper wording is a big no.

  “Using unauthorised accessories compromises your gaming experience. For this reason, the unauthorised accessory will be blocked from use on 11/12/2023,” read the pop-up on the console. It then advised the player to return the product to the store or talk to the manufacturer.

It seems the proper wording is displayed along the code, though, just the article elaborates later. If you think the existence of such code itself is the problem, you're just trying to make someone's life needlessly slow and harder.

Interesting how they render the date, there will be players in the UK who will see that and think they can use their controllers until the 11th of December. I don't know why they didn't just use "12th of November, 2023"

That assumes it renders the same in all locales. Most likely it doesn’t.

Even if they do something locale-specific, Microsoft has a knack for fucking specifically dates up. For me Windows keeps falling back to using the backwards US way even though I keep correcting it to use the international way. I think this is because I prefer the US keyboard layout (I've no need for a GBP sign above the three, hash is much more useful), something causes that to leak out.

Also even if they have that nailed, it's still no guarantee. I'm not an Xbox owner but presumably you have a profile with a region (for payments/billing, tax etc) and a selected language. I'd be willing to bet a lot of Brits, Canadians or Aussies have selected "English (US)" language without really thinking through.

We'll see, but I think there will be quite a few confused people in a couple of weeks time regardless.

That is such a weird position to take on the matter, that offers literally no advantages and a several disadvantages.

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