[HN Gopher] What is a hard error, and what makes it harder than ...
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       What is a hard error, and what makes it harder than an easy error?
        
       Author : luu
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2024-02-04 09:45 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (devblogs.microsoft.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (devblogs.microsoft.com)
        
       | formerly_proven wrote:
       | I guess the NT equivalent are those error popups that come out of
       | SYSTEM and similar accounts, yet somehow manage to get on the
       | interactive user's session display. They usually have styling
       | that's several Windows versions out of date.
        
       | janci wrote:
       | Interesting they were actual graphical dialogs with bouse support
       | in 16-bit windows, but you'd get a text-mode blue screen on
       | Win95. Happened a lot to me due to faulty CD-ROM drive. D: can
       | not be read. Abort/retry/fail. What was even the difference
       | between Abort and Fail?
        
         | ronsor wrote:
         | Abort terminates the application. Fail returns an error code.
        
         | deathanatos wrote:
         | > _What was even the difference between Abort and Fail?_
         | 
         | A whole generation of computer users has wondered this.
         | 
         | According to Wikipedia[1], "abort" aborted the program
         | (terminated it), and "fail" returned an error code to the
         | program. (Which ... probably has a high likelihood of killing
         | it all the same, since a given random I/O is probably pretty
         | non-optional.)
         | 
         | Wikipedia also notes,
         | 
         | > _the message has been cited as an example of poor usability
         | in computer user interfaces._
         | 
         | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abort,_Retry,_Fail%3F
        
           | epcoa wrote:
           | In DOS the infamous Abort, Retry, (Ignore), Fail was the
           | default handling of "critical errors". Abort would terminate
           | immediately, and fail would return control to the program
           | with an error code.
           | 
           | You could override this however: https://web.archive.org/web/
           | 20100206220048/http://webster.cs...
        
       | kens wrote:
       | The original definitions of "hard error" and "soft error" were
       | for disks and go back to the early 1970s at least. A soft error
       | was a recoverable error that could be handled by re-reading the
       | disk sector. A hard error was a permanent disk error that could
       | not be recovered.
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-06 23:00 UTC)